Golf super agent Hughes Norton tells Daily Mail how 'zombie-like' Tiger Woods fired him out of the blue and how 'narcissist' Greg Norman stole the blueprint for LIV Golf ahead of the release of his bombshell, tell-all book, 'Rainmaker'

Hughes Norton was the man behind Tiger Woods’ meteoric rise. He first met 5-foot-5, 100-pound Woods when he was just 13. He was his agent when Woods won the Masters at 21 in 1997. He orchestrated his multi-million-dollar deals with Nike and Titleist in 1996. And his reward? Unemployment.

Before Greg Norman was a PGA Tour pariah and Woods was a 15-time major winner launching yet another comeback, Norton was the super agent of the golf world representing them both. 

But his biggest success throughout a career with IMG that spanned two and a half decades, was the discovery of the game's greatest of all time. A success that was just as quickly ripped away from him.

Norton is the architect behind Woods’ billions. He orchestrated Woods' first-ever $40million guaranteed, five-year Nike deal and a $20million contract with Titleist. Yet, despite setting him up with generational wealth, just two years into the deals, an ‘emotionless’ Woods turned around and cut Norton loose.

In 'Rainmaker: Superagent Hughes Norton and the Money-Grab Explosion of Golf from Tiger to LIV and Beyond', co-written with former Golf magazine editor George Peper, Norton takes readers behind the curtain of the high-stakes world of sports management. 

Hughes Norton was the super agent of golf, representing Tiger Woods and Greg Norman

The Harvard Business School alum was the architect behind Woods' meteoric rise to fame 

In his book, he takes readers behind the curtain of the world of sports management

Ahead of the release of his tell-all book, 'Rainmaker', which hit shelves on March 26 in the United States, Norton spoke to Mail Sport about the insight into his meteoric rise and abrupt fall. 

‘It was betrayal with a capital B,’ Norton admits as he discusses being fired by Woods. ‘On a professional level, because I thought I'd done my job in spades. And on a personal level, because it was such a rejection of a relationship that we had built together for 10 years.’

In 'Rainmaker', which is a must-read for all golf fans, Norton recalls the day in September 1998 when an ‘emotionless’ Woods stood before him with ‘zombie-like’ eyes and told him it was over, before turning and walking away. He hasn’t heard from him since.

But the Harvard Business School alum insists he’s not the sole recipient of Woods’ expressionless exits. He claims there’s never an ounce of emotion in Woods’ farewells.

‘The solace I can take, which doesn’t provide much, is this: He was an equal opportunity zombie with relationships, his swing coaches, his lawyer, the guy negotiated the IMG representation deal, with caddies,’ he says. ‘When it's over, it's over.

‘It is the way he terminates relationships with everyone. Whether it's girlfriends, whether it's his former golf coaches. It's ironic, really. In a way he's so good at confrontation on the golf course. If he's playing you, he will beat your brains out every single time. But when it comes to confronting things like me and other people that are in his life, he has no social skills whatsoever. It's maddening, actually.’

The loss of Woods also resulted in the loss of his job at IMG, just 60 days later, which Norton believes was a direct consequence of his biggest talent walking out on him.

Looking back through what many would consider to be some of the lowest moments of their life has been a process which has actually been cathartic, Norton insists, likening writing 'Rainmaker' to sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch.

In Rainmaker, Norton recalls the day in 1998 when an ‘emotionless’ Woods told him it was over

Norton orchestrated Woods' Nike deal - a partnership that lasted 27 years until earlier this year

Norton is pictured with IMG colleague James Erskine during the 1978 Masters Tournament 

And, after revisiting the saga once again, Norton admits that he never truly received closure but can take peace in the knowledge that even now he has no regrets on how he orchestrated Woods’s career. 

From taking on Earl Woods as a junior talent scout for two years to sealing the Nike and Titleist deals to limiting Woods’ loathsome media appearances, Norton maintains he did everything an agent should.

‘I tried as best I could, as best we at IMG could to shield him from this gale force of celebrity,’ he says. ‘Tigermania came out and it was just completely crazy. And that drove him nuts. But we tried to keep the media stuff to a minimum as best we could and then set him up financially on day one with generational wealth. I thought I’d done everything an agent should have done and more.’

And dealing with Tigermania seems like it was no easy feat.

Norton reveals that within the first six months of Woods’ meteoric rise to fame, IMG received over 1500 media requests. Something which naturally gained the company a lot of enemies as ‘p***ing’ them off when they couldn’t fulfill even 10 percent.

He adds that managing Tigermania was like nothing he had ever seen before. Woods was as big as Elvis Presley or The Beatles and certainly bigger than a Great White Shark.

‘Greg [Norman] was a global icon,’ Norton says of another of his former clients. ‘Tiger didn’t even have the global part yet. He was just an American star emerging.

‘Greg, as popular as he was all over the world, and had his fair share of immediate demands, it wasn't even in the same neighborhood.’

Norton reveals in Rainmaker that IMG took on Earl Woods as a junior talent scout for two years

Norton was at Augusta with the Woods family when 21-yar-old Tiger won his first Masters 

Norman, who Norton describes as a ‘classic narcissist’ in his gripping chapters on the now-LIV Golf CEO, ultimately parted ways with IMG in December 1993. 

The ‘ultra-aggressive’ Norman had a ‘consuming need to be visible and relevant’, Norton claims in his incredibly insightful character analysis of the Australian in Rainmaker, and was instantly cool with the young Tiger Woods when he burst onto the scene. Something which was equally reciprocated by Woods.

But by the time Woods was officially on his roster after turning pro in 1996, Norman had already walked out on Norton, branching out on his own.

It was a betrayal that still stung but didn’t come close to the zombie apocalypse Woods would bring forth five years later.

‘After 11 years together, he wanted to go on his own and I understood that a little bit more than Tiger, because superstars historically have sort of gone on their own after a period of time,’ Norton says of Norman. ‘They just do, no matter what management agency they’re with.

‘They think you know what, “everything before this has been good, everything's all fine. No hard feelings. I really want to do it myself.” So that's kind of the Greg situation.

‘He's certainly entitled to that. Was I disappointed and shattered when he left? Yes, because we were such good friends and I didn't expect it. But the Tiger situation was far and away more difficult and more disturbing.’

Norton claims Greg Norman was instantly cool with Woods when he burst onto the scene

But when Norman left IMG, he took a lot more than his global popularity and brand deals with him. He also took the blueprint for the weapon that would send the golfing world into a civil war.

Norman has sold himself as the revolutionary behind LIV Golf but one of the greatest revelations of Rainmaker is that the idea was never even his own. 

Almost every page of Rainmaker divulges a fascinating gem of insight into the secrets of golf world, and among the many, Norton drops the bombshell claim that he had long been whispering IMG founder Mark McCormack’s grand proposal for a global tour, one which he had already pitched to Arnold Palmer years before.

‘Mark McCormack was such a visionary, and so far ahead of his time - leaps and bounds ahead of everybody. And that's a classic example,’ he says.

‘It's really one of the major revelations of the book. LIV, which Greg has claimed as his own genius idea for a world tour, was actually thought up 30 years before Greg ever brought it out as his by this incredibly bright at-the-time manager of Arnold Palmer.

‘Greg left IMG and fired me at the beginning of ‘94. He didn't take long before he launched this world tour idea in the fall of that year.’

LIV Golf CEO Norman took the blueprint for the breakaway from IMG when he left in 1994

Norton with Mark McCormack, the founder and chairman of International Management Group

Flash forward 30 years and the Shark has finally seen ‘his’ vision come to fruition. LIV Golf, financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, embarked on its third season earlier this year after luring away some of the game’s biggest names, including Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, with lucrative deals.

Hughes insists he is very much watching the soap opera that is LIV-PGA Tour negotiations from afar these days but he knows exactly how he’d advise his clients if he was still in the game.

‘It's pretty simple,’ he says when asked how he’d navigate the murky waters of the controversial breakaway. ‘It's such a ludicrous and frankly overvalued amount of money, it almost stops the conversation right there.

‘You can talk about loyalty to the PGA or you can talk about violating the traditions of the great sport of golf, but when somebody offers you multi generational wealth? The reaction would be A) How can I turn that down? And the answer is, you can't. And B) Where do I sign? I couldn't in good conscience say no.’

Rainmaker: Superagent Hughes Norton and the Money-Grab Explosion of Golf from Tiger to LIV and Beyond is available everywhere in the US from March 26.