Mark McCormack

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Mark Hume McCormack (November 6, 1930 – May 16, 2003) was an American lawyer, agent for professional athletes (particularly in golf and tennis) and a prolific author. He was the founder and chairman of International Management Group, now IMG, an international management organization that handles the commercial affairs for sports figures and celebrities.

Biography

McCormack was the only son of a Chicago publisher named Ned McCormack. A graduate of the College of William and Mary (1951) and Yale Law School, he briefly served in the United States Army. He was an accomplished athlete in his youth and qualified for the 1958 U.S. Open Golf Championship, but he missed the cut. After his Army discharge, he worked for a few years as an attorney at the Cleveland law firm, Arter and Hadden.

In 1960, after realizing the potential of sports in the television age, McCormack signed golfer Arnold Palmer as IMG's first client. IMG and McCormack's clients included sports figures Björn Borg, Chris Evert, Pete Sampras, Michael Schumacher, Derek Jeter, Charles Barkley and model Kate Moss. He also handled special projects for Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II. In the nineties, IMG would become Tiger Woods first agency.

McCormack published numerous books, including the bestselling What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, which spent 21 consecutive weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and "The Terrible Truth About Lawyers". His annual publication The World of Professional Golf, first published in 1967, became an equivalent to Wisden for golf fans, and included in its pages the first (unofficial) world ranking system. The system used to calculate McCormack's World Golf Rankings was adapted in 1986 to become the Official World Golf Rankings system - with McCormack chairing the rankings committee made up of representatives from all the major golf tours.

McCormack and his wife Betsy Nagelsen-McCormack, a two-time Australian Open doubles champion and a Wimbledon doubles finalist, founded the McCormack-Nagelsen Tennis Center at the College of William & Mary, which houses the ITA Women's Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame. McCormack died at a New York hospital on May 16, 2003 after suffering a cardiac event four months earlier that left him in a coma. His wife, their daughter and three children from an earlier marriage later shared $750 million when the family's shares in IMG were sold.

Honors

In July 2006 McCormack was selected for induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame in the lifetime achievement category, and he was inducted in October 2006. On January 23, 2008, he was also inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He was featured as one of the Forbes 400 Richest Americans in 1995, 1998, 2001.^[1] In 1990, he was named the "Most Powerful Man in Sports" by The Sporting News.

The British film Wimbledon (2004) was dedicated to Mark McCormack by director Richard Loncraine.

The Mark H. McCormack Medal is awarded to the leading player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking after the U.S. Amateur Championship and the European Amateur Championship.^[2]

Bibliography

• What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes From A Street-Smart Executive, New York: Bantam, 1984
• What They Still Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, New York: Bantam Books, 1989
• Never Wrestle with a Pig and Ninety Other Ideas to Build Your Business and Career, Penguin, 2002
• The Terrible Truth About Lawyers: How Lawyers Really Work and How to Deal With Them Successfully, Harper Collins, 1987
• Success Secrets
• The 110% Solution
• Hit the Ground Running
• What You'll Never Learn on the Internet
• Staying Street Smart in the Internet Age
• Mark McCormack on Negotiating, Century (June 1995)
• Mark McCormack on Selling, Random House Business Books (June 15, 1995)
• Mark McCormack on Managing, Random House Business Books (October 1995)
• Mark McCormack on Communicating, Dove Entertainment (February 1999)

References

External links

• Memorial from College of William and Mary
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Obituary
• International Tennis Hall of Fame bio