Dan Hicks, NBC’s longtime golf voice, dies at 64

Dan Hicks, the NBC Sports play-by-play announcer who was the network’s lead golf voice for 26 years and called the 2024 Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal Golf Club, died Wednesday at age 64, NBC Sports said.

Hicks died after an acute illness, according to his wife, broadcaster Hannah Storm, who called his death “sudden and unexpected.” The couple were married for more than 30 years and have three daughters, Hannah, Ellery and Riley.

NBC Sports executives Rick Cordella, Sam Flood and Molly Solomon described Hicks as “an exceptional storyteller and caller of games” in a statement, and said he greeted colleagues with humour and encouragement. Storm wrote that he was “the person everyone wanted to be around.”

Born and raised in Tucson, Ariz., Hicks worked in radio and local television before joining CNN in Atlanta as a sports reporter in 1989. He moved to NBC in 1992, worked as a tower announcer on the network’s golf broadcasts and took over the lead play-by-play chair in 2000. Over the next quarter-century he anchored NBC’s coverage of the U.S. Open, the Open Championship, the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup and the Players Championship, much of it alongside analyst Johnny Miller, Golf.com reported.

For Canadian golf fans, Hicks was the voice of the 2024 Presidents Cup, played Sept. 26 to 29 at Royal Montreal in Ile-Bizard, Que., a club that dates to 1873. NBC’s broadcast plan named him play-by-play commentator for the event and noted he had called every Presidents Cup since 2000. That week the International team was captained by Canada’s Mike Weir and included Canadians Corey Conners, Taylor Pendrith and Mackenzie Hughes. The United States won the cup.

Hicks also called speed skating at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, according to his NBC Sports biography, one of 15 Olympic Games he worked for the network. He was best known at the Summer Games as NBC’s swimming voice, calling all eight of Michael Phelps’s gold medals in Beijing in 2008 and all 28 of Phelps’s Olympic medals from 2004 to 2016. At the Winter Games, he called Alpine skiing at the last four Olympics, NBC said.

His most replayed golf call came at the 2008 U.S. Open, when Tiger Woods holed a putt on the final hole of regulation to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate. “Expect anything different?” Hicks said as the ball dropped. Woods went on to win the Monday playoff.

Beyond golf and the Olympics, Hicks called NFL and NBA games for NBC in the 1990s, joined the network’s French Open tennis coverage in 2019 and was in his seventh season as the play-by-play voice of Notre Dame football this fall, NBC Sports said.

Tributes came from across the sport on Thursday. The PGA Tour said the sound of his voice “is woven into our memories of the game,” and the USGA remembered him as a warm and generous friend. Longtime NBC colleague Roger Maltbie told Golf.com the loss felt like losing a pal, while Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner said Hicks was “64 going on 44.”