GREG NORMAN

SHARK ATTACK
Aussie golf legend Greg Norman has turned his Shark image into a global entity by diversifying into everything from wine to turf cultivation and is fast heading down the fairway to billionaire status

It’s a scorching late summer day in Palm Springs, and Greg Norman is inspecting a golf course at PGA West that will bear his name. The course is still mostly dirt, though it’s fully sketched, and with the sand traps filled in and the lakes dug out, you can see the shape, like a sketched-out canvas before the paint is applied. The design, like Norman’s game, is unrelentingly aggressive, with bulbous ponds and cavernous pot bunkers. For as much as $235 a round, it will test a skilled player and eat a timid one alive.

The Shark, arguably the most recognizable golf name in and out of the sport before another fellow with a predator’s nickname came along, flew up in the morning from Florida in his sleek Gulfstream 550 jet with a team of top employees, and he has all of two hours to walk the course, give instructions to the course superintendent, the landscaper and the construction engineer, and get back to the landing strip to be in Vail, Colorado for a 1pm lunch meeting.

Even so, despite the blazing heat and limited time, Norman almost literally leaves no stone or parcel of turf, unturned. "I don’t like having my name on something without having my hands on it,” he explains later. "That’s why I’m running around. I’ve taken a long time to build up my name and do the correct branding of myself and my image and logo, and I’m protective of it.”

A real shark has to keep moving, and Greg Norman has hardly stopped for almost 30 years.

Attacking Business
Norman’s curriculum vitae glitters with 86 titles. Back in the days when million dollar purses were all but unheard of, Norman became the first player to earn more than $12 million in prize money. After the PGA started a ratings system in the mid ’80s, Norman held the number one slot for the equivalent of almost six years. Only Tiger Woods has held that position longer.

If Norman the flamboyant golfer is well known, Norman the business strategist is a worthy alter ego. Starting with endorsements, appearance fees and licensing agreements, Norman used the sport that made him to seed an empire, parlaying his core competence into a diverse network of golf-related interests under the banner of Great White Shark Enterprises.

There’s a production company that hosts tournaments and special events, a golf course design firm, a company that makes turf for golf courses and a residential real estate development company with golf course properties. There’s also a restaurant, the Greg Norman Australian Grille in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Other divisions handle merchandising and licensing. The apparel line is ubiquitous, and he has achieved the global positioning multinational companies covet so intensely.

Products, such as Shark.com, a website, and Greg Norman Estates (a wine-making partnership with Australian Beringer Blass Wine Estates) are joint ventures that expand the Norman brand by piggybacking on the Shark’s image as a flamboyant, expansive personality whose slogan is to "attack life”.

The Business Course
If losing money made him take notice, making it became downright exciting. In 1987, under contract to the IMG sports agency, Norman founded Great White Shark Enterprises to control his endorsement portfolio. The same year, he founded Greg Norman Golf Course Design in Australia. In 1992, Reebok licensed his name for the Greg Norman Collection, which was turning over $200 million in four years.

A year later he left IMG, which was taking 10% of winnings and 25% of merchandising, launching Great White Shark Enterprises with its aggressive growth strategy.

In 1995, the year Norman won PGA Tour Player of the Year honors, Great White Shark launched Greg Norman Turf, which was used in the 1999 Superbowl, the 1999 World Series in Atlanta and the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

In ‘97, Norman opened the American arm of his golf course design company, as well as Medallist Golf Developments, a joint venture with a major Australian bank to develop residential real estate in the United States, Australia and Mexico.

His businesses can be found at Shark.com, a division of Greg Norman Interactive. Rather than just a fan site, the website is another savvy marketing tool that capitalizes on the Norman brand. Everything is linked by a theme, the Greg Norman lifestyle.

"They’re things Greg would do,” says a Norman spokesman. "Greg and his wife Laura like wine but he’s not going to put his name on a potato chip or gardening products. They wouldn’t fit his lifestyle.”

A Billionaire Dollar Plan?
Norman, who turned 50 in February, still likes to play. "I have a great staff and can walk away from the office and not worry about it,” he says. "The business is self-supporting.”

But Norman is far more involved than many star players who garner heavy fees for their names more than their direct input.

"I don’t like having my name on something without having my hands on it,” he says on the golf course. "That’s why I’m running around like crazy. I’ve taken a long time to build up my name and do the correct branding of myself, my image and logo, and I’m very protective of it. Your name is on [the products] a long time.

Before he turned professional, Norman once told two friends that he’d make a million dollars before he turned 30. It didn’t take him even that long.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Greg will end up a billionaire,” Frank Williams, Australia-based managing director of Great White Shark told biographer St. John. With a privately held business that’s still relatively young and a personal fortune estimated at $230 million, Norman appears to have every chance.

From Down Under to Life at the Top
"Clearly guys like Palmer, Nicklaus and Norman were in the vanguard,” says branding guru Tom Peters. "They turned the sports personality into a real industry. They understood that even though they would not have used the same language, that they were ‘packages’ and that there was more to them than swinging a golf club. They made brands of themselves.”

Norman is not the only player to do so. Before image became everything, golfers were among the first athletes to build wealth on the foundation of fame. Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player, to name just a few, became involved with similar businesses. But no one pulled it all together quite like Norman, whose fame, like Michael Jordan’s or Wayne Gretzky’s, transcended his sport.

Not bad for a kid from Queensland, Australia, who only started playing when he was 16. Norman took two years to become a scratch player. In 1976, aged 21, he skipped college and turned pro, quickly attracting fans, endorsements and sizeable, sometimes controversial, tournament appearance fees.

Off the course, Norman acquired a reputation for a toy chest that included Ferraris, Harleys, yachts and motorboats, jet skis, a twin-engine helicopter and staffed palatial homes.

But when he started in business in the 1980s, Norman was not immediately that engaged by it. Biographer Lauren St Johns writes that he often fell asleep in meetings. "Greg learned from some early mistakes,” adds Carl Vigeland, author of Stalking The Shark. "He lost some money, and it caused him to sit up and pay attention.”

FIVE SHARK DESIGNED COURSES.
Championsgate, Florida
Two 18-hole Greg Norman designed courses within this 1,400 acre, $800 million resort. Par 72 - 7,406 yards
Parkland Golf & Country Club, Florida
Two 18-hole Greg Norman designed courses within this 1,400 acre, $800 million resort. Par 72 - 7,406 yards
Sugarloaf Country Club, Georgia
A 27-hole, private course sculpted into the grounds at the Tournament Player’s Club hosts the PGA Tour’s BellSouth Classic each year. Par 72 - 7,259 yards
The Great White Course at Doral, Miami
This unique desert-space feature, the only one of its kind in the Southeastern United States, is only 15 mins from the airport. Par 72 - 7,171 yards
Medalist Golf Club, Hobe Sound, Florida
Noted for its tree-lined fairways and fast greens and acclaimed as one of Florida’s best layouts. Par 72, 7.079 yards