Tiger Woods has been linked to agent Mark Steinberg for the better part of three decades, but even superfans may not know that another agent preceded Steinberg’s tenure with Woods, forming a relationship with the Woods family that began before Tiger was even a teenager.
Former IMG agent Hughes Norton has the distinction of being the first agent to represent the Big Cat, and Norton was responsible for negotiating Tiger’s first mega endorsement deals with Nike, Titleist, American Express, Rolex and more. But a year after Tiger won his historic Masters in 1997, Norton was abruptly fired, and he says he still isn’t sure why.
On this week’s episode of Subpar, Norton revisited his history with Tiger and his family, which he discusses in detail in his recently-released book, Rainmaker.
What was it like to recruit Tiger Woods? For Norton, it started when Tiger was only 12 years old. Norton had been keeping tabs on up-and-coming juniors, and on a trip to Southern California, he decided to pay the Woods family a visit at their home in Cypress.
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“I had never ever talked to a family or a kid that young before,” Norton told Subpar hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. “And all my colleagues in the golf department at IMG were giving me a hard time saying, ‘Oh, are we tennis now, Hughes?’ Because tennis players turn pro when they’re 14 sometimes.”
Norton cultivated a trusting relationship with the Woods family as Tiger grew up, which led to Norton representing Tiger when he decided to leave Stanford to turn pro. The contracts that Norton secured for Tiger made him one of the highest-payed athletes in the world before he had even hit a shot as a professional. Tiger’s first Nike contract was a five-year, $40 million deal.
“What was the reaction from Tiger Woods when you first presented in that contract?” Knost asked Norton.
“Complete indifference,” Norton replied. “It was — I sat in the hotel suite. It was the night before he went out to play his first round as a pro, the pro-am at Milwaukee, 1996. I had three contracts. I had a $40 million fully guaranteed deal from Nike, a $20 million fully guaranteed deal from Titleist, and the IMG representation contract.
“And we went through them page by page, and really, I said indifference, it’s kind of boredom as we go through,” Norton continued. “Not so much Earl, but Tiger kind of yawning and wondering when SportsCenter’s gonna come on. You know, he’s 20 years old. He had no frame of reference whatsoever for this, and I kept trying to put it in perspective.
“I would say, Tiger, just so you know, this $8 million a year for shoes and clothes from Nike is four to five times what the No. 1 guys in the world right now in your sport are making, Nick Faldo and Greg Norman. How do I know that? Because they both were clients of IMG. And it was like, eh. Finally, sign them out, and I said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ He said, ‘It’s not bad, huh?’ Then he got up and went and watched TV.”
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