Dan Hicks died Thursday at 64 after an acute illness, and Tiger Woods was among those who moved quickly to honor the broadcaster who spent decades shaping how golf sounded on television. Woods said Hicks did “the incredible job he did for our sport for decades,” a tribute that landed with extra force because the voice so many fans associated with the game is now gone.
Woods also sent a message to Hannah Storm and their children, saying he hoped they could find comfort in knowing how much Hicks meant to so many people and the lasting impact he made on everyone whose life he touched. That message gives the loss a more personal edge: this was not only a familiar broadcaster, but someone Woods felt compelled to reach out about as soon as the news broke.
Readers searching for Jack Nicklaus may be seeing a familiar name from golf history, but this moment belongs to the modern broadcast era Hicks helped define. He had been NBC’s lead play-by-play announcer since 2000 and was widely described as the voice behind some of golf’s most memorable moments, which is why his death resonates beyond a single network or tournament.
The reaction also carried a quiet contradiction that fits the size of the loss. Woods praised Hicks’s lasting impact, yet golf will not feel the same without him. Todd Lewis marked that absence on Friday by holding a moment of silence before the afternoon round of the Austin Championship, a small pause that said what a longer statement could not: the sport has lost one of its defining voices, and no immediate replacement can fill that space.
What remains unresolved is the illness that ended Hicks’s life. That detail was not disclosed, and it leaves the focus where Woods left it — on the work Hicks did, the people he reached, and the decades of golf memory attached to his name.
