Profile: Business guru to a tee, Agent Mark McCormack

Agent Mark McCormack got the big money into sport, but has also written management books on watching people. Patrick Hosking tests the tips on the author

A copy of What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School is in my pocket as I arrive in Sandwich, Kent, to interview Mark McCormack, agent to the stars, multi-millionaire impresario, the man who put the spondulicks into sport. I am thus equipped because McCormack - who is here for the British Open golf tournament - is also a best-selling management guru . . . and author of What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School.

Have I digested enough of the book's tips to make a decent fist of the interview? Such as McCormack's seven-step guide to people-watching? ('Step 1: Listen aggressively'). Will he see through my ploy to put him at his ease ('Flatter legitimately,' page 53)? Will I remember to 'tune into fringe times' - his tip to exploit casual moments, when people let down their guard and reveal hideous truths about themselves?

Arriving at McCormack's rented Georgian villa a few miles from the Royal St George's links, I follow the book's instructions to home in on the eyes - 'the most fertile arena for observation'. McCormack's are cloudy, pale blue, and never hold my gaze for more than a few seconds before flying off. I don't feel much wiser.

McCormack has made a fortune from his executive self-help books. What They Don't Teach You sold more than one million copies in hardback. He is a master of the teasing book title (The Terrible Truth About Lawyers). His commonsense tips and aphorisms, spiced with anecdotes about his famous golfing chums, have proved irresistible.

So has his monthly newsletter, Mark McCormack's Success Secrets, which is lapped up at $85 a year by more than 20,000 subscribers, including 10,000 Japanese businessmen. In November Hit The Ground Running is published, his book of tips on coping with travel and hotels.

But the millions from writing and lecturing are dwarfed by his fortune from sport. He has more than a passing interest in the nearby golf. Thirty of the players at Sandwich are clients of his International Management Group, including Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, Sandy Lyle and Greg Norman. IMG takes a slice of their money, arranges product endorsements and generally holds their hands.

That is just the beginning. IMG handles the television rights to the Open. It merchandises the Royal and Ancient logo. It publishes the Open annual. It makes the documentary film and video library of the Open. Golf's grandees are entertained in the IMG marquee.

Finally, each afternoon for two hours McCormack, a keen amateur golfer himself, does the television commentary for the BBC, an engagement that goes back to 1967. 'It's fun and it's ego-satisfying.' It is also probably his thinnest source of income - his BBC paycheque hasn't been increased in 26 years.

McCormack's domination of the golf industry is legendary. Ever since he famously signed Arnold Palmer as his first client in 1960, he has found that golf and money go together like Royal and Ancient.

Regarded as the father of sports representation and sponsorship, McCormack diversifed long ago into other games, especially tennis, and other forms of entertainment. IMG now boasts a client list that includes Andre Agassi, Martina Navratilova, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Jean- Claude Killy, Sir Neville Marriner, Des O'Connor, Angela Rippon, the Pope and the Nobel Prize.

IMG employs 1,000 people in 75 companies in 21 countries around the world, juggling sports contracts, clinching sponsorship deals, building golf courses, inventing new sporting events and running them, negotiating television rights, cosseting athletes and investing their enormous incomes for them.

McCormack says IMG's gross income is about dollars 1bn, but he gives no hint of its profits nor his own personal wealth. 'I don't really know,' he says, not very convincingly: this is, after all, a man who religiously records how many miles he flies each year and how many hours he sleeps.

Although admired by his many grateful clients, McCormack has made enemies too, and is nicknamed 'Mark the Shark' by some. IMG is sometimes accused of exploiting the sports it handles. With so many fingers in the sporting pie, there are numerous potential conflicts of interest. IMG events sometimes clash with rival events. IMG clients are accused of favouring IMG events, frequently sponsored by corporations for which IMG acts as consultant.

In 1983 a parliamentary committee under Denis Howell, the former minister for sport, recommended that IMG be referred to the Office of Fair Trading.

In 1990 the US magazine Sports Illustrated mounted a three-month investigation into McCormack and IMG but found nothing very sinister, although one former IMG executive claimed McCormack used to eavesdrop on colleagues using speakerphones - an allegation he denies.

Nevertheless, IMG is perceived as heavy-handed by many in sport. At the recent US Open, IMG executives were given instructions to cold- shoulder a golf writer, Larry Guest, whose newly published book about Palmer, Arnie: Inside the Legend, included a highly unflattering chapter entitled 'Darth McCormack and the Evil Empire'.

And last week Alastair Johnson, a senior IMG executive, when asked whether IMG planned to take legal action against Guest, replied: 'I don't think so. Like the IRA, our day will come.' That kind of menacing remark, even if uttered in jest, has tarnished IMG's reputation with some.

McCormack insists he is not worried by critics: 'It just flows off my back like water off a duck. It would worry me if someone could point at something that was morally wrong, ethically wrong, wrong for our clients. But I don't think we've done any of that.'

However, he cannot disguise his anger with Guest, whom he calls a 'schlock journalist' before launching into the following tirade: 'He's kind of an overweight, sloppy-looking person who exploited a relationship that Arnold Palmer made possible for him. Arnold Palmer took this man into his confidence, he flew him in his jet, he allowed him to share meals with him. The guy's just the lowest form of journalist.'

McCormack is practised at defending the benefits that big business can bring to sport, and denies that the athletes have been corrupted by big money: 'You talk to the top 20 golfers in this tournament and I don't think many of them could tell you what the third, fourth or fifth- place prize money in the British Open was. They want to win, and the money takes care of itself.'

Mark Hume McCormack was born in 1930, the middle of the Great Depression, into a prosperous Chicago family. He was an only child. His father was a publisher. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, was an ancestor.

Injured in a car accident at the age of six, he was barred from contact sports and took up golf. He played in the US and British Amateur Championships, but recognised he was not quite good enough, though even today, aged 62, he has a respectable handicap of seven.

He left home at 20 to study law at Yale, and practised for some years in Cleveland. He says his lawyer's training and attention to detail is responsible for much of his success.

McCormack looks older than the photos in the glossy brochure he has printed to publicise himself: 'One of the great business pioneers of our time,' it begins.

He has few plutocratic tastes - no Rembrandts, no yacht, no executive jet. He has houses in New York, Cleveland, Florida and London. He usually gets up at 5am and starts dictating at once.

He shows no sign of retiring. His three children - Breck, Todd and Leslie - all work in the business. 'Ultimately they'll take an increasing role.' His second wife is Betsy Nagelson, the professional tennis player.

He has no intention of floating the business and has turned down numerous offers. 'Everyone I ever talked to who went public is sorry they did.' That includes his friends Martin Sorrell of WPP and Hugh Hefner of Playboy, where McCormack was a non-executive director.

Despite his millions of words about business success, he seems uncertain what has driven him, beyond the fact that he likes what he does. 'I enjoy what I'm doing. I play golf with the top golfers in the world and play tennis with the top tennis players. I just like very much what I do.' Betsy has latterly interested him in Christianity. Kerry Packer, the Australian businessman, is the closest he gets to having a mentor: 'He's someone who's given me a lot of wise counsel.' After I leave I realise I've completely forgotten to 'tune in to fringe times'. Those telling truths will have to remain hidden.

(Photograph omitted)