I first spoke to Hughes Norton in the spring of 1989 when I was a writer/reporter for Sports Illustrated and collaborating with senior writer Ed Swift on a profile of Mark McCormack, founder and CEO of the International Management Group. The headline for the story, which ran in the May 21, 1990 edition of SI, described McCormack as “the most powerful man in sports.”
Norton was among the dozens of sources whom I interviewed. His point of view was a particularly salient one, for he had worked at IMG for several years, first as McCormack’s executive assistant after Norton had graduated from Harvard Business School, and then as the head of IMG’s golf division. He came to know McCormack and his company as well as anyone.
Forty-two years old at the time of our first interview, Norton represented Greg Norman, the No. 1-ranked male golfer in the world, as well as two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange. Another client was World Golf Hall of Famer Nancy Lopez. So, it would not be a stretch to assert that back then, Norton was among the most powerful people in the golf business. And his muscle in the game exploded in 1996 when he became Tiger Woods’ agent and negotiated a series of mind-numbing business deals for the lad, among them a $40 million contract with Nike and another with Titleist that reaped half that amount.
But it all came crashing down two years later. First, Woods fired Norton in a phone call. The next morning, Norton flew down to Florida to meet Woods face-to-face, at Isleworth Country Club near Orlando. Woods stood at the front door of the clubhouse when Norton drove up. Norton asked Woods if they could go inside and talk. But the golfer said his mind was made up, and that he and Norton were through.
With that, Norton says, Woods walked away, adding that in the 25 years since, Norton has not heard one word from his former client.
Some three months later, Norton endured an equally unsatisfying meeting with McCormack, who presented him with a two-page termination agreement that included a $9 million buyout and a 10-year non-compete clause.
In the wake of those sudden and unexplained dismissals, the man who had come to be called “Huge,” a moniker that came initially from Seve Ballesteros mispronouncing his first name but was later used by friends and foes alike to describe his outsized stature in the game, went all Greta Garbo on the golf world and disappeared.
Twenty-five years later, Norton is back, with “Rainmaker,” a book as absorbing as it is insightful. Co-authored with Links magazine editor George Peper, who also served as editor-in-chief of Golf Magazine and has authored 19 books, it dishes on actions of many of Norton’s past clients. Such as Norman, who unceremoniously dumped Norton in 1993 after 11 years as his agent but only after involving him in the cover-up of an adulterous affair that ended the Aussie’s first marriage. And Mark O’Meara, a one-time client who was for many year’s Woods’ closest friend on the PGA Tour – and who Norton believes was the one who induced Woods to drop him as his agent.
Then, there is Norton’s conviction that Norman essentially stole an idea for a world golf tour McCormack had first conceived of – and arranged financing for – in 1964 and then revisited with IMG executives in 1976. “The idea had been killed, certainly the first time and as nearly as I can surmise the second, by Arnold [Palmer] out of his loyalty to the PGA,” wrote Norton, adding, “[M]ore than once during the course of my … relationship with Greg, I shared with him the details of Mark’s idea – the elite field, the limited number of events, the huge purses, the TV and sponsorships – all of it. … Imagine my surprise in 1994 – one year after Greg left us – seeing him pontificate about ‘his’ concept for a world tour. ... Except, of course, it wasn’t his idea; it was Mark’s as conveyed by me. The blueprint Greg laid out … could have been photocopied from Mark’s manifesto.”
“Rainmaker” also provides an unprecedented look at McCormack, the father of sports marketing, and how his very nimble mind worked and the ways he built IMG into a global behemoth.
In addition, Norton lays out a deep and detailed account at what being a high-level sports agent is all about and the wild ride he took while representing many of the very best golfers in the world. He also describes golf’s remarkable growth through the decades, from what was little more than a mom-and-pop enterprise when McCormack began representing Palmer in 1960 to a global business churning out hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and profits.
Taken together, these and other inside-the-ropes elements make “Rainmaker” a fun and fascinating read, with Norton reflecting quite openly on his personal and professional failures and triumphs during his time at IMG.
Before its release to the general public this month, Norton took time to speak with Global Golf Post about this foray into the writing world. Quite understandably, the first topic of conversation was: What have you been up to since that very difficult fall of 1998 when Woods and McCormack both gave you your walking papers?
“Not a lot,” said Norton by phone from Aspen, Colorado, where he was visiting one of his two daughters, Mandy, and his three grandchildren. “I was happy not to be working nonstop, living on the road and chasing athletes around the world. I had no desire to go back to the golf business, even after the non-compete ended.
“I have been very careful with my money,” Norton said. “I have invested well, and I have really been enjoying my grandchildren. I still live in the Cleveland area but travel around the country in the winter to get out of the cold and to see friends.
“I’m still single, and truth be told, that is kind of an empty feeling,” added Norton whose marriage to Candy, the mother of his two children, ended in divorce in 1986. “I have sort of resigned myself to things being that way. It would be wonderful to find somebody, but I have never found the right person. I guess I have been something of a recluse, but that’s all right. I actually welcomed it after all that had gone on.”
“The Nike deal for Tiger was so groundbreaking. And the numbers for his contract dwarfed what the very best in the game at the time, in Faldo and Norman, were getting. Tiger’s annual guarantee – $8 million a year for five years, not including bonuses – rivaled what Michael Jordan was receiving back then.”
Hughes Norton
As for the reasons why he wrote the book and how the project came together, Norton said: “I have been planning this for a while. My non-compete ended in 2008, and at that point my agent started approaching publishers. But they thought too much time had passed since I had left the game. So, I dropped the idea and put it out of my mind.”
Then in the winter of 2022, Norton appeared on Chris Solomon’s popular No Laying Up podcast.
“Afterwards, I had all these people contact me, saying that they had really enjoyed the podcast,” Norton said. “A couple of them even suggested that I write a book.”
One of those was Peper, whom Norton had worked with on projects years ago with his IMG clients when Peper was at Golf Magazine. And Peper asked Norton if it wasn’t finally time to do the book.
One thing making the question easier to answer in the affirmative at this juncture was the emergence of LIV Golf, with its conceptual connections to the world tour McCormack had first imagined some 60 years ago and the way the golf league’s battle with the PGA Tour was pitting two of Norton’s highest-profile clients from his “super-agent” days, Woods and Norman, against each other. Suddenly, the proposal seemed that much more relevant to publishers, which is why Norton and his agent were able to secure a deal with Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Another factor for Norton was his interest in numbers and the way some of them aligned as he looked into doing this book.
“I was 75 years old, it was the 50th anniversary of my joining IMG and the 25th anniversary of getting fired by Tiger and IMG,” he said. “If there ever was a time for me to reflect on my life and put together a book, it was now.”
An additional rationale for telling his story emerged as the writing process began.
“I had no idea how cathartic it was going to be,” Norton said. “I had taken a lot of hits along with my successes, and there were a lot of unresolved things I had kept inside. It was good to finally be sharing them. It truly raised my happiness level.”
Among the many things he shares in “Rainmaker” are his biggest triumphs.
“The Nike deal for Tiger was so groundbreaking,” he said. “And the numbers for his contract dwarfed what the very best in the game at the time, in Faldo and Norman, were getting. Tiger’s annual guarantee – $8 million a year for five years, not including bonuses – rivaled what Michael Jordan was receiving back then.
“It was just so exhilarating when it went down,” Norton added.
When it comes to the personal side of golf, Norton cites his win in the 1995 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am with David Duval, who was also one of his clients.
“I played in that event twice with Greg [Norman] and three times with David,” Norton said. “And the last time with David, we won. We were in the final group on Sunday, and we finished in second place, three strokes behind a team that included the professional Bruce Vaughan and a Japanese amateur by the name of Masashi Yamaha, who claimed to be a 15-handicap. But an investigation after the tournament revealed him to be a 6 in Japan. So, two months after the pro-am, David and I became the actual champions.”
When it comes to Norton’s biggest regret, it has to do with his aborted business relationship with Woods.
“Tiger was such an amazing story,” Norton said. “He was on his way to becoming one of the greats of all-time. He was a generational talent who I had found, recruited and signed, and someone for whom I did an incredible job. It is the sort of thing that an agent dreams of accomplishing in his career, and I had done that.
“Two years after signing Tiger, I was 50 years old and figured I had at least another 10 years with him,” Norton said. “Or maybe 20. And then to have it all cut short, so unexpectedly, rudely and unnecessarily, it was crushing.”
Norton’s story, in its own way, is amazing, too. And with Peper’s help, he tells it very well in “Rainmaker.”
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