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McCormack no more

AFP, New York
Mark McCormack, considered by many people as the most powerful man in global sport, died here Friday, four months after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 72.
McCormack was the founder of International Management Group (IMG), the agency which has ties throughout the sports world in promotions, representation of athletes and event operations.
The legendary McCormack had historical ties to Al Capone, the Pope and the King of Sweden. He had been in a coma at a hospital since mid-January.
McCormack's rise to the top of the sports marketing empire began in 1960 with a handshake between himself and golf legend Arnold Palmer, a pact that ignited the mainstreaming of professional athletes.
"I am proud of what IMG has achieved and I know I was very lucky to start with Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus, " McCormack told
www.sportbusiness.com in an interview in 2001.
"When I signed them they had only won one tournament between them. But TV was just coming into its own, the players started winning and if people wanted to talk to them they had to come through me."
And what about that famous handshake with Palmer?
"We have always been forthright and stuck by our written or verbal agreements and that has brought us business," he said.
"There are some people around the fringes of this business who are sleazy, who do under the table
deals with dirty money."
McCormack's stable of stars included golfers Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam, tennis' Venus and Serena Williams, American football's Joe Montana and ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky.
Among IMG's clients are Wimbledon, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, modelactors Elizabeth Hurley and Liv
Tyler, renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Kennedy Space Center and the Smithsonian Institute.
McCormack also handled special projects for world leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Pope.
McCormack played a pivotal role in how athletes were paid and portrayed. His corporation employs more than 3,000 people and provides more than 5,000 hours of television programming to more than 200 countries worldwide.
A Yale University law school
graduate, McCormack did not stop with Palmer.
After Player and Nicklaus, he branched out into other sports, signing tennis great Rod Laver in 1968. Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova followed.
By 1990, McCormack was named the "Most Powerful Man in Sport" by Sports Illustrated. He also has been named the "Most Powerful Man in Tennis" and the "Most Powerful Man in Golf."
McCormack, who was working at the time of his heart attack, is survived by his second wife, former tennis pro Betsy Nagelsen, four children and seven grandchildren. His three oldest children are executives at IMG.
The Chicago-born McCormack suffered a fractured skull when he was six after being hit by a car.
Unable to play contact sports, he turned to golf.
He learned the sport by playing with his father and occasionally with Chicago prosecutor George E.Q. Johnson, who put Capone behind bars.
After qualifying for the US Open as an amateur, McCormack graduated from Yale law school. Following a tour of duty in the Army, he accepted a position at a prestigious Cleveland law firm, Arter and Hadden.
While there, he launched IMG with the Palmer handshake.
IMG has 80 offices in 32 countries and is based in Cleveland. Under its umbrella, it is the largest independent producer of televised sports programming, top modeling agency and biggest licensing agency in the world.