In an exclusive excerpt from Rainmaker, a former sports superagent reveals how Arnold Palmer once foiled a breakaway golf tour. And how Greg Norman stole the idea for it. Twice.
By Hughes Norton
In1976, IMG founder Mark McCormack called a Saturday morning meeting—something he rarely did. Even more mysterious was that he gave no agenda for the meeting.
When the small group of us sat down, Mark said, “I have a secret new project to share with you: the Second Tour.” He’d actually had the idea since 1964, and had documented it in his 1967 biography of Arnold Palmer, but he’d now developed it in much greater detail.
He’d thought of everything: an elite field of the world’s best players, more prize money, fewer tournaments per year, events in every major international market, a season-ending championship. Even health benefits and a pension plan for the players, things the PGA Tour didn’t offer. It really could work. The best part, Mark believed, was that those who chose to defect to this Second Tour could have their cake and eat it, too. They’d still be able to play in the four major championships, as those events, in order to maintain the strength of their fields, would want and need the Second Tour players.
Mark told us his idea had germinated well past the theoretical stage. Funding was there from a major corporation, the networks were ready to bid on television rights, a commercial airline was prepared to charter the players, and a major hotel chain was on board to offer accommodations.
After that meeting, strangely, nothing happened. I suspect that Mark made another run at Arnold, as he had in 1964, to gauge his interest and that, once again, A.P. said no. And there was another reason the time was not right for a second tour. At that moment, the PGA Tour was doing a pretty good job of reinventing itself under Deane Beman, who, through a combination of entrepreneurial vision, hard-nosed negotiating and just plain smarts, revolutionized modern professional golf, wrenching it from its mom-and-pop roots into a dazzlingly profitable business. (During his 20-year tenure as commissioner, the PGA Tour’s assets would grow from $400,000 to $260 million.)
I never forgot about Mark’s concept, though. More than once during the course of my 11 years as Greg Norman’s agent, I shared with him the details: the elite field, the limited number of events, the huge purses, the TV and sponsorship aspects—all of it. As someone who loved playing golf around the world—and for lots of money—Greg was mesmerized by the concept every time we talked about it.
Imagine my surprise in 1994—one year after Greg fired me—seeing him pontificate about “his” concept for a world tour. “I had this idea: How do we get the best players to play against each other on more of a regular basis and give them an annuity into the future? I just thought there was a better way, a World Golf Tour where they could have ownership. That’s thinking outside the box. Like an entrepreneur. Understanding the marketplace.”
The blueprint Greg laid out, in alliance with tournament operator John Montgomery, could have been photocopied from Mark’s manifesto.
And just like Mark’s idea, it never happened. In his haste to launch the idea, with a press conference at his Shark Shootout tournament in November 1994, Norman made a major strategic error by trying to blindside the PGA Tour. At the last minute, tour officials got wind of what he was up to and preempted him, holding a player meeting the day before his press conference during which several players spoke up against the idea. The overall tone was: “This is a bad idea, a Greg Norman idea that is about Greg Norman and for Greg Norman.”
But it was the man who spoke last and most passionately at that 1994 player meeting who ultimately killed the idea, just as he had twice before: Arnold Palmer. At age 65, he held the deep respect of every player in the room.
“Greg,” he began, “have you ever heard of the Big Three? How many times do you think we were approached with a plan like this? More than I can count. Do you know why we always said no? Because it would have been bad for the game and bad for the fellas. You guys are young and have a lot of golf in front of you. You can do what you think is best, but I don’t want any part of this.”
And with that he rose and walked out of the room.
Norman claimed to be stunned by Arnie’s remarks. “I had never had a conversation with him about any of this prior to his speech. It was one of the most disappointing moments of my life,” he wrote in his autobiography, The Way of the Shark. Clearly he’d forgotten, or more likely chosen to dismiss, my telling him years earlier of Arnold’s long-standing opposition to the World Tour—such would have been consistent with Greg’s arrogance.
It was an embarrassing setback for Greg, and he would harbor a bitter animus toward the PGA Tour for more than a quarter-century before resurfacing with his idea three years ago, this time under the guise of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf. And this time he would enjoy 18 months of fleeting, artificial success before suffering the greatest public humiliation of his life, when during a Congressional hearing it was revealed that his dismissal as CEO of LIV Golf would be a mandatory condition of any PGA Tour agreement with the Saudis.
Norman, swaggering narcissist he is, has always loved commanding the arena. Being the world’s best player fueled his ego, but ultimately I believe golf was primarily a means to an end for him, a way for him to acquire luxury homes, Ferraris, airplanes, yachts and fame by wheeling and dealing in business. He went at these extracurricular pursuits full bore, perhaps as an alternative scorecard to make up for his golf achievements falling short of expectations.
Certainly, no individual in the game of golf has ever been aligned more perfectly with the motives of the Saudis: power, money and image burnishing. And as the most polarizing superstar the game has produced, he’s the perfect leader of the renegade LIV circuit. Greg has always been a disrupter, someone who perceived enemies, beginning with a father who disapproved of his becoming a golf pro and thereby became estranged from him, and continuing through a succession of business managers that included me, along with three or four caddies and three wives. His attitude has always been: “It’s me against the world. I’ll get back at you all, prove you wrong.”
Adapted from Rainmaker: Superagent Hughes Norton and the Money-Grab Explosion of Golf from Tiger to LIV and Beyond by Hughes Norton and George Peper. Copyright © 2024 by Hughes Norton. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster LLC.
