Dan Hicks, NBC's Voice of Golf for 26 Years, Dies at 64 After Sudden Illness

Dan Hicks is gone, and golf has lost the voice it heard more than any other for a quarter of a century. Hicks, NBC Sports’ lead golf announcer since 2000, died on Wednesday at 64 after an acute illness, his wife Hannah Storm announced on Thursday. He joined NBC in 1992, called 27 of Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour wins and all 28 of Michael Phelps’ Olympic medals, and he was scheduled to be in the booth again on Saturday for Notre Dame-Boston College.

What did Hannah Storm say about her husband?

She said the family is heartbroken by a sudden and unexpected passing. Storm, an ESPN and ABC broadcaster, posted the news on social media on Thursday morning, writing that Hicks was a devoted husband of over 30 years and a loving father to their three daughters, Hannah, Ellery and Riley. “His loss is immeasurable,” she wrote. “Dan was truly one of a kind and, quite simply, the person everyone wanted to be around.” The couple married on January 8, 1994, and Storm said he brought the energy and the laughter and the people together whenever he walked into a room.

What did NBC Sports say?

That he was an extraordinary colleague and a storyteller who raised the biggest moments in sports. NBC Sports president Rick Cordella and executive producers Sam Flood and Molly Solomon said in a joint statement that Hicks elevated some of the biggest moments in sports history, and that his blend of knowledge, style, enthusiasm and humour informed and entertained fans for decades. “From Olympic swimming and skiing to Notre Dame football, numerous other high profile events and especially as the signature voice of our golf coverage for the last 26 years,” the statement said, “Dan’s blend of knowledge, style, enthusiasm and humor informed and entertained fans for decades.”

Which calls defined his career?

Two of them, eight weeks apart in the summer of 2008. At Torrey Pines in June, Woods holed the putt that forced a playoff at the U.S. Open, and Hicks asked the question that has followed the moment ever since: “Expect anything different?” Two months later in Beijing, Hicks called all eight of Phelps’ gold medals as the swimmer chased Mark Spitz’s record, and NBC Sports says he called all 28 of Phelps’ Olympic medals from Athens 2004 through Rio 2016. He also called 27 of Woods’ PGA Tour wins in total, including three U.S. Open triumphs, and 27 U.S. Opens and 23 U.S. Women’s Opens, the Associated Press reports. The golf world spent Thursday reaching for the same word for him, and Bernd Wiesberger’s broadside at the Dubai greens this week showed how rare a steady voice still is in a sport that argues about everything, including the grass.

How wide was his career beyond golf?

Wider than most viewers realised. Hicks handled play-by-play at 15 Olympic Games, NBC Sports reports, including a record eight in swimming and the last four in Alpine skiing, and he was part of the Sports Emmy-winning broadcast team at the Paris Games in 2024. He called the NFL for NBC from 1992 to 1998, worked NBA games and the French Open, and became the network’s Notre Dame football voice, with this fall his seventh season in that chair. He was due in South Bend on Saturday for Notre Dame against Boston College, the New York Post reports, and NBC has not yet said who will call the game in his place. His range is part of why the tributes came from so many directions at once: the USGA called him a true friend to the game, USA Swimming said his voice was the backdrop to its iconic Olympic moments, and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard team said his voice became part of the fabric of Alpine racing.

What happens to NBC’s golf coverage now?

That is the open question, and it is a large one. Hicks had been the lead voice since 2000, when he replaced Dick Enberg, and he anchored the Players Championship for almost 30 years. The PGA Tour’s statement said his voice is woven into the memories of the game, which is another way of saying the next voice will be measured against a standard nobody else set. Golf’s calendar gives NBC a little time: the DP World Tour season ends in Dubai this weekend, where Joost Luiten leads and Rory McIlroy chases a record-equalling eighth Race to Dubai title, and the PGA Tour season is winding down. But the booth is empty now, and the first test of who fills it will come quickly. Hicks started at CNN in 1989, a Tucson native and University of Arizona graduate who spent 34 years at one network, and the tributes on Thursday treated him less as a broadcaster than as a fixture, the way Frank Kennedy’s Q-School disqualification reminded the same sport this week that its rules still bite, and the way Joaquin Niemann’s weighing of a PGA Tour return showed how much of golf now happens away from the booth entirely.

What happens next?

NBC will name a replacement for Saturday’s Notre Dame game first, and for its golf coverage after that, while the PGA Tour and the USGA decide how to mark a career that ran through their biggest events. The family has asked for space, and no memorial details have been announced. What is certain is the gap: for 26 years, the voice that introduced golf to American living rooms on Sunday afternoons belonged to one man, and from this weekend it will belong to someone else.