CLEVELAND, Ohio – Greg Norman brought his Aussie swagger to the golf course. Tiger Woods captivated fans with his gravitas and his victories. And IMG pioneered the sports-agency phenomenon from its Cleveland base.
But behind them all was one man, Hughes Norton.
The man who Golf Digest twice included among the 36 most powerful people in the game is retired after a distinguished career. Norton grew from a wet-behind-the-ears chargé d’affaires to Mark McCormack, the man who built IMG, into a powerful agent who fueled the agency’s golf division.
The New England native and longtime Chagrin Falls resident chased, promoted, marketed, represented and protected some of the biggest names in professional golf. Norton was as integral as an agent as a nine-iron is in a golfer’s bag. Now, Norton has penned “Rainmaker,” an easy-reading, compelling book about his experiences.
At first he was apprehensive about moving to Cleveland, writing, “I didn’t even have to change time zones!” But he bought a starter home in Shaker Heights and based his travels from Northeast Ohio.
For Norton, following the game meant keeping close tabs on golfers. For fans, following golf is to understand history.
The PGA Tour’s roots can be traced in part to Deane Beman, a vanguard who Norton offers an enlightening take.
Beman was a professional golfer but not a fan of agents, so he and McCormack didn’t hit it off. But his best days would come off the course. Beman dug into the organization’s financial paperwork and almost singlehandedly shaped the PGA Tour into the success story it would become.
“It’s Deane Beman’s contribution to turn this frankly mom-and-pop operation that the pro tour was when I first got out there into this behemoth that it has become,” Norton told cleveland.com. “It’s all on this guy. He did amazingly smart, bright, creative things.”
Norton dives into his former employer, IMG, a company that had little turnover and a lot of power.
As Norton says: “McCormack invented the sports-agent business.”
The IMG founder, Norton writes, was a man “of vexing contradictions – demanding yet open-minded, generous yet tightfisted, appreciated yet unpraising, trusting yet paranoid.”
“Rainmaker” peels back amazingly interesting stories about the sport and its people in a page-turner of a book. Norton also drops in vignettes – quick, off-the-beaten-path interesting anecdotes. One details his time as a bag man – literally – for Raymond Floyd and his gambling winnings while another talks about Tiger Woods’ eyesight.
Norton crafted money deals and fell into power plays. He takes the reader into his many wheeling and dealing moments and casual conversations, like chats with Woods’ father, Earl. He’s clear about which golfers are amenable to endorsement deals and which ones eschew off-course financial involvement, like Tom Watson, who Norton says capitalized less on his playing achievements than most golfers of his caliber.
He dishes the good and the bad. It’s never petty, always entertaining. A primer: Beman: Visionary. Jim Nantz: Good guy. Norman: Not so nice.
McCormack’s mission was shaped by never accepting complacency, and that mantra fueled Norton at every drive, putt, chip and approach. It’s also why he was willing to meet with a 13-year-old kid named Tiger Woods.
Through the years, victories and relationship, Norton saw his main job with the game’s heir apparent as keeping Woods away from chaos.
Hughes Norton, golf super-agent, has written a compelling book about his experiences representing some of the greatest golfers in the sport’s history. It’s a well-done page-turner.Mal McCrea
“Image,” Norton writes, “had become important as income.”
Norton never pats himself on the back too much or gets too down.
Like his former boss, “I was this type A - driven, aggressive,” he said. “The book says I was either the most powerfully hated agent in the game or the most hated powerful agent in the game. Take no prisoners and try to negotiate for every last dollar for my client, and then I get fired. It was devastating.”
His vantage of the sport and his proximity to the greats who played it make him the perfect person to write this book.
“We started this 50 years exactly since I started work at IMG,” he said. “It was 25 years since I got fired, first by Tiger and then by McCormack, the only guy I had ever worked for. And I’m 75 years old, I’m not getting younger.”
Norton had always said no to interviews about his career. But two years ago he stumbled across a golf podcast called No Laying Up. He appeared as a guest in 2022 and received positive feedback, with people saying: “You should write a book.”
Enter George Peper, a contemporary of Norton whose paths had crossed throughout their careers. Norton had hired Peper, who had edited Golf Magazine, to write books with some of his clients, including Norman. A week after the podcast dropped, Peper emailed about how he loved his insight and dropped the question:
“Is it time we finally wrote that book?”
They spent an initial three days in Charleston gathering background, with the extremely organized Peper using a color-coded system to keep track of notes and chapters. He did what a good public ghostwriter does: He deftly pulled out details, stories and facts.
“I tried to tell the good as well as the bad,” Norton said, saying feedback often amounted to, “This guy is so self-deprecating, he’s almost too hard on himself with this book, he talks about all the things he (messed) up. They’re so shocked. That’s just reality, I am trying to tell what happened truthfully.”
In February 2023 they landed a deal with a publisher and drove their way through 10 months of reporting and writing, digging back 25 or more years into Norton’s life.
“I could never have had a better collaborator than George,” Norton said.
In retirement, Norton settled down, helped in part by a non-competitive agreement in his severance agreement. He travels to visit former clients and golfs. He spends time with grandkids and tries to stay fit. He remains a “hopeless sports fan,” rooting for his Red Sox and Celtics.
The book, which came out in late March, has drawn the best kind of feedback: Golfers gravitate to it, but non-golfers who appreciate the sport are fascinated by it as well.
“People are saying ‘I wasn’t even going to read this book because I don’t play golf, but it’s a business book, it’s a book about life,’ ” Norton said. “That makes me feel really good.”
About the book: “Rainmaker: Superagent Hughes Norton and the Money-Grab Explosion of Golf from Tiger to LIV and Beyond,” by Hughes Norton and George Peper, Atria Books, 2024, 256 pages.
Book signing: Norton said he is not doing many signings, but he is scheduled to appear 1 p.m. Sunday, June 2, at Fireside Books, 29 N. Franklin St., Chagrin Falls.
Reviews: For the week of April 21, “Rainmaker” cracked the USA Today Best Seller list of top 150 books based on sales.
Stories by Marc Bona
I cover restaurants, beer, wine and sports-related topics on our life and culture team. For my recent stories, here’s a cleveland.com directory. WTAM-1100’s Bill Wills and I talk food and drink around 8:20 a.m. Thursdays. Twitter and IG: @mbona30. My latest book, co-authored with Dan Murphy: “Joe Thomas: Not Your Average Joe” by Gray & Co.
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