Greg Norman - A Taste For Profit

Among Greg Norman's toys is a 61-foot sportfishing boat that hauls, to use a nautical term, some serious ass. One morning a few years ago, Norman and some pals were running west-southwest out of the Turks and Caicos Islands , heading for an atoll a hundred or so miles north of Cuba . Shortly after sunrise, Captain Norman noticed something on his radar.

"There's a blip behind us," he recalled recently, reclining in an upholstered chair in the clubhouse at Medalist, an exclusive golf club he developed in Hobe Sound , Fla. , about five miles from his Jupiter Island home. "Now, I'm doing 30 knots, and this thing's catching up to us."

Norman 's boat (Medallist, with two l's) had drawn the attention of the U.S. Coast Guard. "Since we were going at a high rate of speed down toward Cuba ," says Norman , "they thought maybe there was something funny going on."

Norman was instructed to bring his boat to a stop. Once the cutter arrived, an interrogation ensued over the radio. "They wanted to know, 'Who are you? Who's the owner of the vessel? What's the I.D. number?'" says Norman , who patiently answered all questions.

At one point, he recalls, a woman came on and said, " Greg Norman , huh? You're the wine guy."

"And I went, 'Yesssss!'"

For most ex-jocks, guys signing memorabilia at card shows or shaking hands at casinos, the idea of losing their identity as a "former great" would be a catastrophe. For Norman , it is reason to celebrate. While the Shark may be best remembered for the misfortunes that befell him on Sundays at major tournaments (he's the only player to lose each of golf's four majors in a playoff), he has more than his share of victories. His 20 PGA Tour wins and 68 wins worldwide include the British Open in 1986 and '93. Arguably the greatest player after Jack and before Tiger, Norman now lords over a business empire so vast--reports put his personal net worth at $200 million--that its annual revenue dwarfs the prize money he made in three decades as a golfer.

To make the leap from athlete to mogul, says Norman , "you need to cross over a kind of threshold--from being one person to being another person." That is, the ruggedly handsome golfer has given way to the ruggedly handsome entrepreneur. The Greg Norman Collection, which markets sportswear, golf apparel and accessories bearing Norman 's distinctive, multicolored shark logo, enjoyed 14 straight quarters of double-digit growth from 2002 through 2005 and is still "trucking along very nicely," he says. His Greg Norman Golf Course Design has 102 layouts, completed and in development, on five continents. While allowing that his company wanted to cash in on Norman 's name, Ed Weinlein of Crescent Resources, for whom the Shark has designed four courses, says, "We found out quickly he had a great, great eye for the land."

In the mid-'90s, with his course-design business thriving, Norman began casting sidelong glances at the developers who could afford his seven-figure fee. He thought, I'm working for developers. Maybe I should be a developer. He partnered with Macquarie Bank of Australia, and created Medallist Development, described on shark.com as "an international developer of award-winning, master-planned communities." So far, Medallist has constructed $3 billion worth of high-end homes whose occupants, Norman hopes, are partial to wines with a shark on the bottle. Greg Norman Estates, established in 1998, produces wine in Australia and, more recently, California , and sells some 240,000 cases a year.

"He's got a great palate," says Ron Schrieve, a former opera singer who is Norman 's winemaker in California . "It's been kind of neat to sit and break bread with him, kick around ideas about wine. He's a hell of a good guy, but, you know, when he looks at you with those shark eyes--his focus is like a laser. This is a guy with a vision."

He's always had an eye for the future too. In the '80s, "when I was playing probably my best golf," says Norman , "I observed which way Arnold went and which way Jack went." Though Palmer pioneered modern sports marketing, parlaying his fame into numerous endorsements, Norman felt Arnie diluted his "brand" by pitching everything from snow tires to motor oil. Nicklaus was more selective and more entrepreneurial, and that approach appealed to the Shark.

While Norman is not above plugging products--his deals with Land Rover and Qantas Airlines spring to mind--he is slow to say yes and unwilling to endorse products that aren't a comfortable fit with his brand. "I enjoy golf course design, I enjoy developments, I enjoy the clothing and the wines," declares Norman , who turned 51 in February. "All the relationships I've been involved with concern things that I'm passionate about. I won't do a fake relationship."

Apparently not. A fortnight before SI's interview with him, Norman announced that he and his wife of 25 years, Laura, would divorce. (They have a daughter, Morgan-Leigh, 23, and a son, Gregory, 20.) "We both want to do it amicably," he told the Sydney Morning Herald . "We've had 27 years together and, absolutely, we will remain friends."

According to a story in the Herald Sun, another Australian daily, Laura "is a president, vice president or director of 20 separate companies that control the bulk of Norman 's wealth." If she contests the divorce, she likely would be entitled to half of her husband's assets under Florida law. Little wonder, then, that Norman wants to keep things amicable.

The seed of Norman 's Croesus-like net worth was planted in 1993, when he arrived at a crossroads in his career. His contract to be managed by IMG was about to expire. He still had some competitive years left at 38, but his gaze, as usual, was directed toward the horizon. "I didn't want to be dependent on golf to make my living for the rest of my life," he recalls. It was around this time he decided, according to Bart Collins, president of his holding company Great White Shark Enterprises, that "instead of building deals around himself, he would rather build businesses around himself."

Striking out on his own, Norman sat down to renegotiate his deal with Reebok, which puts out the Greg Norman Collection. "Why are we locking ourselves into a three- to five-year contract?" he recalls asking Paul Fireman, then the company's CEO. "You've spent millions of dollars on advertising, promotion, establishing the brand. Why don't you and I do a lifetime deal?"