The Creator of the Talent Industry - 23 May 2003

Who is Mark McCormack?

The first time I was asked that question was nearly 40 years ago and it was put by one of my oldest American friends.

I was aghast, astonished, as one always is astonished at the ignorance of somebody on a television game show who doesn't know something you know very well.

We accept, do we not, without awe their knowing a dozen things we've never heard of.

And then only this week when I said sadly over the phone: "Mark McCormack's dead" I received the same, stony, astonishing question.

Well to be candid it is a good question, just as difficult a question to answer as when you mention that David or Richard is a consultant and the other comes back at you with, "What is a consultant?"

I was long frustrated at trying to find a sensible definition of the word till one day, years ago, I came on an old copy of the humorous magazine Punch.

I was chuckling over a piece by, at the time, a famous English humorist named AP Herbert.

The piece ended with a sentence which I would have guessed could not have been written earlier than say the 1970s but here in the late 20s the piece ended: "There will always be a consultant."

He was writing about a visit to what we used to call the doctor and is now called, in this country, your primary care physician.

He was remarking on the developing habit of a puzzled physician sending you to a specialist, known then - and since 1898 I find - as a consulting physician. I suppose some would say a second opinion.

Well this hasn't helped me much with telling you what Mark McCormack was so special at - what in fact made him the worldwide pioneer of a profession he made his own.

So this week I did some more philological digging and more astonishing than anything I discovered that the first use of the word in English was in - wait for it - 1698.

It's defined in the Oxford as meaning then "A consultant: One who consults an oracle."

That doesn't help - McCormack was the Oracle.

He took on as clients people already famous in their profession as golfer, opera singer, author, footballer, racing car driver, violinist - and from time to time if they needed special help, a prime minister - Mrs Thatcher, or even a holy man - the Pope.

Let's begin with an approximate definition. McCormack was the creator of the talent industry, the making of people famous in their profession famous to the rest of the world and making for them a fortune in the process. It's a unique and amazing story.

Mark McCormack was born in Chicago in 1930. A fair, gentle boy with a feel for games.

Unhappily he was only six years old when he was struck by a car and broke his skull.

He survived but under strict orders from the family doctor never to play a contact sport - a taboo incidentally, or coincidentally, imposed on another great sports figure - Bobby Jones - as an ailing little boy.

And so as with Jones the tender young McCormack was taken along with his father to the local club and taught to play golf.

The small boy clearly loved the game and his father did the right thing if he wanted his boy to become a golfer, as distinct from a man who plays golf.

He had him take lessons year in and year out from the age of say eight.

Consequently he became a pretty good amateur golfer, doing something not achieved by one amateur in a hundred thousand: he qualified and played in the United States Open Championship, the US amateur, the British amateur.

But I don't believe he ever intended for a second to become a pro.

He was a bright boy and he took an honours degree in French at a famous southern university and then a law degree - from Yale no less - by the time he was 24.

After two years in the army he joined a modest law firm in his native Midwestern city - Cleveland - at a modest salary.

He kept thinking somehow he ought to combine law with his favourite game and in his late 20s he had an idea.

He noticed that even the best golfers earned no more than a fairly successful doctor or lawyer but he'd like the idea of helping great golfers to be thought of as movie stars, entertainers and be rewarded accordingly. Where to begin and how?

It must have been a flash, a revelation, when he realised that the only top player he knew, who'd just won the United States Open Championship, was an old college friend - a lean, athletic, attractive man in his late 20s, well known of course through television to thousands of fans.

But how to make this young man wealthy beyond the hopes of avarice and leave a decent cut, perhaps enough to guarantee a living, for Mark H McCormack?

By 1960 most of the leading players had somebody - a friend, a brother, a wife - make the travel arrangements for being on the tour which starts in January in Hawaii, goes through California and the deep South and then up and all over the country till the late fall.

McCormack said to Arnold Palmer, let me take you over, I will do all the arrangements for travel, accommodation - hotels - take care of all your bills, your taxes - the works.

But furthermore I'm going to get you to do television advertisements for a whole range of things.

Like?

Oh like golf clubs, balls, clothing, whatever.

"Whatever" came in time to be television endorsement spots - ads - for an automobile, an investment firm, a bank, a watch, a department store chain, a brand of petrol and an aircraft manufacturer.

McCormack was to take 20% of all relevant television advertising earnings, 10% of prize money on the tour and 3% of total salary.

I have run since into equally famous men who said they would never say yes to those tough terms.

And Palmer, earning then $50,000 a year in 1960, about 500,000 today, must have thought twice.

If he did, on the third thought he said yes.

Four years later his income had increased 10 times and years ago, as Mr Micawber might have put it, annual income $10m, annual expenditure $2m-plus to Mr McCormack, result happiness.

From Arnold Palmer McCormack went on to embrace Jack Nicklaus and other golfers.

But why stop at golf ? Came a time - oh, 30 years ago - when stars of every breed and trade prayed and begged to be in the care of McCormack Inc.

For by then he'd set up his own firm - IMG - International Management Group. The main office is in Cleveland still. The other 84 offices dotted around nearly 40 nations are staffed by around 2,000 men and women.

And by now you don't have to wonder who manages the leading racing drivers, baseball, skating, basketball stars, opera singers, concert pianists and how about Venus and Serena Williams? Of course. Itzhak Perlman, Pavarotti? Of course. Tiger? McCormack Inc. has just signed Mr Woods to a new sports clothing deal for $100m over five years.

What is less believable at a first hearing is that he should have been requested, solicited, to help organise the ceremonies of such institutions as Wimbledon, the US Olympic Committee, the US Space Centre, the Nobel Prize Foundation.

Oxford University once cried help and McCormack help was on the way.

The answer to the upcoming question - why? - is simple.

McCormack was a great administrator. The General Marshall of administration.

General Marshall in the Second War ran the war of supply of everything - weapons, food, so on - for Europe, the Pacific, Burma, the Mediterranean. He was described by Churchill as a great gentleman and a very great administrator.

Simply, Mark McCormack was the Marshall of the administration of talent.

He gave the word management a new magnitude. He planned every detail, anticipated every mishap.

How would you care to organise, to invent and arrange the physical tours of the Pope across friendly or hostile nations?

And the details of his conveyance, his protection? McCormack had the bullet-proof transparent shell made.

How many police and plain clothes men to watch an audience of one million listening to a pontiff whose medical needs call for precautions as well as security?

McCormack successfully took care of the scores of papal journeys, as well, I presume, of the Vatican portfolio.

And as for the good fortune in the famous tenors, ballplayers, opera singers, sports stars who came under his protection, well - to whom much is given, from them much is required.

I remember a famous golfer once at drink time nervously looking at his gleaming sponsor-donated watch.

He had to be up at dawn to go to Chicago and bless a manufacturing company's new line: "his" sweaters.

"And oh my god next Monday I have to fly to Japan."

"Playing there?"

"No, no, no, no - I have to launch a chain of tea shops in my name."

And maybe this weekend you noticed that the great Annika Sorenstam, as she addressed the ball, is wearing on her cap the logo of the clubs she endorses, on her collar the logo of a food company, on the chest of her shirt, upper right, a motorcar logo, upper left a shirt maker and at the edge of a sleeve another reminder of her club manufacturer.

The gentle, handsome Mark McCormack worked steadily and ruthlessly every day from 4 in the morning for his clients.

I suspect he overworked, setting all these celebrities and institutions along their paths of glory, which as we all know lead to only one place and in his case too soon.

Last January he had a massive heart attack and went into a coma from which he never recovered.

Last Friday this remarkable man died at 72.

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