Class Colloquium 20: Hughes Norton – Life, Golf, Business. Feb. 11, 2025

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Going forward, the Class Colloquia will focus more on the insights and experiences gained by members of our class. Our classmates have an incredible range of accomplishments and wisdom — often achieved without significant personal aggrandizement, self-promotion or fame.  When I have a chance to delve more deeply into the “accumulated wisdom” from all that experience, I’m often blown away.

We are kicking off 2025 with an interview with Hughes Norton, followed by an open discussion.  Hughes was one of the early executives with International Management Group — the legendary sports management company that basically created the sports management industry.  Hughes began as an aide to founder/CEO Mark McCormack, moved into a very successful career as an IMG sports agent representing top golfers like Tiger Woods and Greg Norman and finally became the top executive at IMG overseeing the entire golf division.

While at the top of his game, Hughes had a series of business and personal setbacks — losing his top clients to other agents, getting fired from IMG … even getting divorced.  All of this, the highs and the lows, gets addressed in his 2024 memoir, Rainmaker.  One interviewer characterized the book as a story of “fame, fortune and failure.”  (Vulnerably, Hughes doesn’t hide the details of going from the top — twice being named one of the “Most Powerful 36 People in Golf” by Golf Digest – to the bottom, being fired without cause by both Tiger Woods and IMG.)

Since its publication in March, the book has garnered significant attention. USA Today ranked it at number 91 out of the top 150 of all 2024 books, only one of two sports books in the list. The Wall Street Journal published a highly complimentary 1,000-word review.  Jim Nance, of CBS Sports, said “This is the most amazing behind-the-curtain view ever written about the world of sports management.”   And recently, the book was nominated for the prestigious U.S. Golf Association’s Herbert Warren Wind Award, given to the best book of 2024.