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Castaway
1 appearance
Marketing man who turned Wimbledon into a multi-million pound business and made millionaires of Palmer, Nicklaus and Player.
On the island
Eight records
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice
It's uh Don't Cry for Me Argentina, which uh has always been a sort of an exotic and uh sort of a melody and a haunting tune that I've always liked and it sort of reminds me of the distant places around the world that I've been fortunate enough to travel to and have been fortunate enough to have associations with over the years.
The second record is And I Love Her by the Beatles and written by Paul McCartney. And of course I've I've always been very, very as I'm sure millions of others have, but I've been very attached to the Beatles, I think largely because their career really started about when mine started in the in the sixties. And I've sort of related to their lyrics and to everything they did. And this particular song is I think one of their best.
Oh, the third is by a group that I've always felt very attached to once again because they came along right at the sort of the height of my career in the mid seventies, I think, or early seventies, the Eagles. And uh this particular one is the best of my love.
The next song has a lot of meaning to me because the BBC did a television program a number of years ago. On it, Tony Jacklin, who was one of our clients in the early 70s, sang a song called Both Sides Now. And of course, Both Sides Now is a record that talks about life and um I've often thought about it uh in terms of my own life quite a bit, so it's got a double-edged meaning to me, Tony Jacqueline and uh both sides now.
Drive All NightFavourite
The next one is a a song that um actually reminds me a lot of Betsy because um she's been a great Bruce Springsteen fan all of her life and one of the songs that we both liked uh by Bruce Springsteen was Drive All Night.
Uh the next record is um uh Stevie Nick's record, uh Leather and Lace.
Paul McCartney and Denny Laine
The next song is something that I've spent a lot of the most enjoyable days of my life on the west coast of Scotland. playing golf at Turnberry and Prestwick and Troon and some of the great golf courses there. And right off the west coast is a place called the Mull of Kintyre. And of course, since I've already said I'm a Beatles fan and I'm a Cartney nut, I get a double edged result again with Wings and Mull of Kintyre.
The last record is a very meaningful one to me. It's a song about Marilyn Monroe. And it's called Candle in the Wind by Elton John. And it basically talks about life being like a candle in the wind or her life being that way. And of course, that's the sort of feeling that I have about many of the sports personalities and other personalities that I've known. Their careers are short or shortened by injury or lack of ability or age or what have you. And you think about all of their lives as being candles in the wind.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:52How did you come to take up golf?
Well, when I was six years old, uh I was hit by a car in Chicago, Illinois, where I lived, and uh had a uh uh fractured skull. And at that time, all young boys in America wanted to play American football and uh I was certainly one of them. And the doctors told me that because of the fractured skull I uh really shouldn't do that. Um and uh my father, recognizing that I with someone that liked to compete and liked sports, uh suggested that I uh start playing golf and taught me golf uh at a very young age at a time when not that many people were playing it in the United States. And uh He felt it was a sport that I could play throughout my life, and one that I could play obviously with no danger to a fractured skull. So I started golf at that point.
Presenter asks
7:38So the young Mark McCormack, aged thirty-ish, looked at a golfer called Arnold Palmer and thought, um, I could do something with this man and his talent. And you made him an offer. What was it?
Well, in those days, as strange as it may seem today, nobody was representing professional athletes and um I felt that I knew golf and I was a lawyer and uh and I knew that he had a very vast raw talent. And I said to Arnold that I thought that I'd could get him some golf exhibitions and maybe help him with some contracts and look at the contracts he already had and improve them. And he said, you know, he said, I really can't stand dealing with contracts and taxes and finance and insurance and all those things. And if you could take that off my mind so I could just concentrate on playing golf, it'd be terrific. shook hands on a on an arrangement that has um lasted for almost thirty years now and uh And the only agreement he and I have ever had has been a handshake.
The keepsakes
The book
Victor Hugo
Well, I want to have uh Les Miserable. And I want a French dictionary to go with it because I'd I'd like to improve my French as I uh go through the fourteen or so so volumes uh of Les Miserable, which I read parts of when I was in school majoring in French, and I'd just like to complete them.
Presenter asks
17:47Wimbledon is much more, as you quite openly say, about money than it ever was. You've redefined it in that sense. What do you say to those who would accuse you of making money more important now than the tournament, than the game?
I don't really think so. I don't think I've done that. I think that any player at Wimbledon, you could ask anyone that's still in this championship now. what the prize money is if they lose a quarterfinal match or win it. None of them will even know the answer to that question. They'll know they win more. But all they're really trying to do is win the championship. Wimbledon is the most prestigious tennis event in the world by miles. It's to the credit of the people that have been running the All England Club and the Wimbledon Tennis Championships that they've been able to do this, and they jealously guard their position at the pinnacle of the game.
Presenter asks
23:11Mark McCormick, the criticism that is most often levelled against you is that you have potentially a conflict of interests, that you can often manage a tour for tennis players or cricketers, and at the same time own the event that they're going to play in, and represent many of the players who are turning up in it, so you're getting a slice of the action at every turn.
If you take an event like the [Suntory] World Match Play Championship at Wentworth, for example, which Is an event that we created out of thin air, meaning there was no World Match Play Championship in golf. I felt there ought to be one. We put up the money to create this event. It's now become a part of the London autumn season, sporting season. Certainly the second most important golf championship in Great Britain behind the Open Championship itself. And that's an event that I've taken our company has taken the full financial risk of. And the qualifications for that tournament are that the best players in the world get automatically invited. If they win the US Open or the Masters or the British Open, they're invited. Because we represent most of the best players in the world in golf, Most of them automatically qualify for this event. Because we've taken the risk of staging the event, putting up the prize money, renting the golf course and what have you. We feel we should take the reward from the sale of tickets, the sale of sponsorship, the sale of television rights and what have you. So I feel the net result of all this is giving the British public a high quality uh golf event for it to see in person and on television.
Presenter asks
27:26Mark, as you've shown, profit is not a dirty word to you money is not unmentionable. Do you find us, the English, somewhat quaint in that respect?
I think there's certainly a l I I like to say the English people, British people are are more genteel uh than we are in America, and I think uh a little bit um more um uh reserved or restrained about talking about things involving money or commercials, they're they're uncomfortable with it. But I think it's changing a lot. And I think that politeness or In effect, reservedness in sports has perhaps worked over the years to the detriment of the British sportsman and sportswoman. But I think that's changing too. And I think you look at what's happened with Nick Faldo, for example, and Sandy Lyle, and some of these golfers that are just beating everybody to death around the world, and I think that's because they're. They're saying, hey, wait a minute, we're pretty good and we're going to assert ourselves just like everybody else does. And I think it's changing.
Presenter asks
29:04So as you sit on your desert island, thinking now back on this career we've been discussing, will you have, do you think, any any large regrets, you know, the deal that slipped through your fingers, or something personal?
My biggest regret is that there isn't more time to do more things. I do in in a given year now a thousand things or more. That's over three a day, maybe maybe more than that. any one of which, when I was sixteen years old, I would have considered the thrill of a lifetime. Uh and uh I I just Feels so lucky to be able to wake up each morning and start a new day. I my my only regret is that there isn't uh isn't more time to enjoy more of it.
“I think the champion uh in sports keeps his killer instinct.”
“I have great killer instinct and not enough talent.”
“One of the strengths that I think I do have is the ability to compartmentalize things and to be get in a huge argument with someone and turn off the minute somebody else walks into the room and be over the argument two minutes after I've had it.”
“My biggest regret is that there isn't more time to do more things.”