Hughes Norton still has plenty to say
Even after publishing "Rainmaker" earlier this year, the former superagent has more stories — and opinions — to share.
Even though he has been retired for a quarter century, former superagent Hughes Norton can still make it rain.
Only now he does it with outspoken opinions instead of multimillion-dollar deals.
Norton became an iconic name in golf in the 1980s and 1990s working for International Management Company, founded by Mark McCormack, and representing stars such as Tiger Woods, Greg Norman and Curtis Strange.
That background and association with Woods and Norman is what made “Rainmaker” the most significant golf book published in 2024. Norton co-wrote it with George Peper, former Golf Magazine editor, after Norton spent 25 years out of the limelight. The book’s behind-the-scenes highlights included how IMG locked up Woods as a client by putting his father, Earl, on the payroll as a talent scout; Norman’s frequent womanizing; and the curious details that led to Norton’s shocking dismissal by Woods.
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During an appearance on “The Golf Show 2.0,” co-hosted by myself, Norton discussed a wide range of topics.
On Tiger Woods and senior golf:
“He's 15 months away from the senior tour and everybody who plays with him in Florida keeps saying he can hit all the shots, it's just the walking kills him. He's the most competitive person I ever met and he will not only attack the senior tour with vigor and enthusiasm, he's liable to win to win 10 or 12 times a year out there. Believe me, in his mind he's already thinking about Bernhard Langer’s record (47 PGA Tour Champions wins).
“Don't bet against him. He can ride a cart every round, he doesn’t have to walk and he’s capable of shooting unbelievable scores out there.
“He lives for competition. He's the most competitive person of all time and, really, that's all that's in his life. Now he is on boards and committees of the PGA Tour and he’s doing this indoor golf league, which I frankly think is goofy. But that’s all side noise. He lives to compete and beat your brains out, and that’s why he can’t get to the senior tour fast enough, in my opinion.”
On Woods’ PGA Tour future:
“I hate to see anyone's legacy sort of tarnished. We have the recency factor in all of our brains. We most clearly or distinctly remember the latest stuff and Tiger is obviously struggling. He is almost 49, he's had all these surgeries. Since February of 2023, Tiger has played only 18 rounds of golf.
(In 2024, Woods played in all four major championships and the Genesis Championship. He missed three cuts; made the cut at the Masters and shot 77-82 on the weekend; and withdrew after one round in the Genesis. He was 45 over par for the 11 rounds he completed. In 2023, Woods played only six official rounds, posting two scores under par at the Genesis Championship.)
“There’s so much greatness there and I want to remember that. I think Jack Nicklaus recognized it was time to exit the stage a little faster and waved goodbye on the Swilcan Bridge at St. Andrews. I was hoping Tiger would do that at the last Open at St. Andrews, but I know better than anybody that he is stubborn.
“That weekend at the Masters when he shot 72 on Saturday and 77 on Sunday — that’s where I thought, even for Tiger, the writing has to be on the wall. I’m old enough to remember when Willie Mays hung around too long (with the New York Mets). You want to quit at the top but come on, if you’re averaging 80 at Augusta, maybe it’s time to hang them up. Jim Brown (pro football Hall of Famer) was (30) when he said, ‘See you later.’ Bjorn Borg retired early at 26.
“I saw a special a few months ago about that era of tennis with Borg and Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe and it was interesting because I lived through it. I could never wrap my mind around this — you retire at 26 as one of the greats in your sport but what do you do for the next 50 years? Maybe he had an idea of what he wanted to do, I don’t know. He was an IMG client and he sank a bunch of money into a Swedish clothing company — against our recommendations — and lost his butt. He recovered and has gone on. It was fun to see him interviewed. The face has aged but it’s still Borg and in that documentary he says that tennis is not an old man’s game.”
On reactions to “Rainmaker”:
“A bunch of people said, ‘Where the hell have you been and what took you so long?' These are stories we would have liked to hear 15 years ago.’
“I heard from some great people like Sean McManus, who just retired as the head of CBS Sports. He was a wonderful guy at IMG with me. He was Jim Nantz’s broadcast agent when Jim was an IMG client. Then all of a sudden, he is Jim’s boss. How the world turns.
“Jerry Pate called out of the blue the other night and said, ‘Hey, Hughes, Suzy and I are in Cleveland at the Cleveland Clinic. We loved your book, let’s get together,’ and we had a great time.
“A lot of former IMG execs told me I nailed McCormack’s personality. Mark had three children with his first wife, Nancy. Leslie, their daughter, was in town to visit her mom at a senior living place about three miles up the road from me. She said, ‘Let’s have a coffee.’ I was very nervous. I told her, ‘Look, I’ve just written a book you haven’t heard about because it just came out. I wanted to tell you and your brothers I was doing it but I was afraid if I told you, you’d say don’t do it.’ Because they had rebuffed a number of approaches about writing the history of IMG and their dad. I gave Leslie a copy of the book, which I signed, and another for her mom.
“She came back and said, ‘We loved this!’ She sent me a picture of Nancy, who is 94, sitting in a chair holding the book. Her caption was, ‘My mom hasn’t read any book for about three years.’ Of course, Nancy was a part of IMG from the early days. That note made me feel really good.
“One thing I heard multiple times was, ‘Why were you so hard on yourself in the book?’ I never intended to be. I swore to George Peper from the beginning that we had to be honest and authentic, and write the screwups by the superagent as well as the tremendous successes because it’s got to be real. What’s the point of going the other way, which would be, ‘Look at all the great stuff I did for the two best players of the last 40 years, Norman and Tiger, and these bastards screwed me.’ Nobody wants to read that.”
On Greg Norman and LIV Golf:
“The idea of a world tour was not Greg Norman's idea at all. It was the idea of McCormack, who invented the sports management business. We quoted a passage from Mark's book in 1967 where he says, ‘I came to the conclusion that the best thing for professional golf would be to have a smaller tour with just the stars because fans want to see the best players compete against each other more often. We could go around the world.’
‘That wasn't done much in those days. Mark lined up a TV network and some sponsors and when he went to Arnold Palmer, Arnold famously said, ‘Mark, we can't do this. It'll kill the other guys on the tour.’
“That was 1967. Fast forward to 1994. I represented Greg from ‘82 to ’93. This came up, we spent an unbelievable number of hours together and we're on planes to Australia and stuff like that. I said, ‘Hey Greg, did you ever hear about this idea of Mark’s that Arnold shot down?’ He said ‘No, tell me more.’ So laid it all out to him in detail and didn't think anything of it until 1994 when he proposed this world tour with John Montgomery, a tournament organizer. They pitched the whole thing to the PGA Tour players who were playing the Shark Shootout at the time. All the top players were sitting in the room, as well as Arnold, who was a special invitee.
“Greg goes through this pitch and finally says, ‘I’d be interested in your reaction.’ There’s a pause. Arnold is the first guy who stands up. He says, ‘Greg, how many times do you think Jack and Gary (Player) and I were approached with this same idea over the years? It didn’t work then, we shot it down, and it’s not going to work this time for me. You guys do whatever else you want in this room, but I’m never going to support something that’s bad for the fellas.’ Then Arnold walked out of the room.
“Greg never got over that, in my opinion. He was famous for holding grudges. I saw that during the time I was with him, whether if was former caddies or someone who had wrong him in some way. He always took it personally and sort of felt, ‘I’m going to get back at you.’
“So here come the Saudis trying to get into golf. They’re rebuffed by Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner and they think, ‘OK, we’ll just do our own tour and we know who we can get as a front man.’ You couldn’t script it any better. A guy who holds a grudge against the PGA Tour and has an obsessive need to be visible and relevant. He was happy to front it and, of course, say it was his idea.
“For most fans, and for me, the LIV Golf tour is irrelevant. Even if they took another five players (from the PGA Tour) and sadly, there aren’t even two more that really move the needle. Yes, Monahan creates these eight special events with increased prize money, gives everybody who stayed more money. Meanwhile, the number of stars who play the run-of-the-mill tour events is depleted because now they’re playing those eight plus the four majors (and three FedEx Cup events) and they don’t want to play much more than 15 times. You know that song and dance. Now sponsors are asked to pay more for less and who have we lost already? Honda, Farmers Insurance, Wells Fargo … RBC is hanging by a thread, the Las Vegas Shriners. This is where the tour is vulnerable because while keeping its players happy with more money, it has created a monster with these big events.
“I'm not sure we know the extent of the Department of Justice investigation into this (PGA Tour-LIV Golf) ‘merger’ but apparently, it's pretty strong and that's hanging over everybody. One thing the Department of Justice wanted was a full disclosure from the Saudis that, as a sovereign nation, they're not interested in sharing.
“So that’s number one. Number two, as Rory McIlroy pointed out recently, half the players on tour are against anybody getting together because some of them can't get over the fact that these six or seven stars and some others took the LIV money and ran.”
On Woods and TGL, the simulator league:
“I could be dead wrong but I don't understand it at all. We had the Masters TV ratings down 20 percent; The Players Championship down 17 percent; either CBS or NBC was down 15 to 17 percent overall in their golf events. Fans are getting turned off and simultaneously we have more and more people playing golf. Maybe they're all going out to play on Saturday and Sunday afternoon instead of watching this circus.
“So now we're going to have a simulator with teams? I have no interest in watching it. What may help Tiger is that it's not Golf Channel, it's ESPN, so that reaches more people. I mean, do I want to hear Max Homa and somebody else talking about how to hit this 6-iron into a screen? I don’t get it. But it’s Tiger, so some people will care.”
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