For those of us who grew up watching golf on television, Dan Hicks was never just a broadcaster. He was the voice that made the sport’s biggest Sundays feel like a shared experience. When you heard him, you knew it was the weekend, you knew the stakes were high, and you knew you were in good hands.
When the news broke that Hicks passed away on November 11 at age 64, it felt like losing a familiar companion. His wife, ESPN anchor Hannah Storm, shared the heartbreaking announcement that their family was devastated by his sudden passing following an acute illness. Suddenly, the golf world felt a whole lot quieter.
As a fan, you cannot think of Hicks without immediately going back to Sunday, June 15, 2008, at Torrey Pines. That afternoon, Hicks delivered the defining call of his career, a four-word question that became permanently etched into golf’s shared memory: “Expect anything different?”
Years later, in an interview with GOLF.com, Hicks pulled back the curtain on how that iconic call came together, calling it “the most amazing week I’ve ever spent in a golf broadcast booth.” He explained that the line was completely unscripted, building up organically from the energy around the 18th green.
“All I kept thinking was, you know, the 20,000 people around this green, the millions of people watching at home, everybody expects him to make this,” Hicks recalled. Looking over at broadcast partner Johnny Miller, Hicks saw a knowing grin that said, Here we go again. We’ve seen this movie before. “When it went down, it was just, it came from, you know, deep inside of me,” Hicks said. “Because I just thought that that kind of captured the moment, that everybody else was thinking. They were thinking the same thing I was.”
The Call at Torrey Pines
The setup could not have been more dramatic. Tiger Woods, visibly hobbling on a torn left ACL and a double stress fracture in his left tibia, stood over a 12-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open. He needed it to force a Monday playoff against Rocco Mediate. Millions of us were on the edge of our seats, bracing for either heartbreak or another chapter of Tiger mythology.
As Hicks noted, the putt bounced across the notoriously bumpy poa annua greens before catching the right edge and dropping. As Woods erupted, pumping his fists toward the crowd, Hicks did not rush to fill the air. He let the roar of the gallery breathe before asking the exact question every single one of us watching at home was already thinking.
“Expect anything different?”
Moments later, he smoothly handed the story to the next day: “Rocco, you’ve got Tiger for 18 holes tomorrow.” Woods and Mediate both shot 71 in Monday’s playoff, and Woods went on to win on the first sudden-death hole to claim his 14th major championship.
Why It Resonated With Fans
The genius of that call, and what I will always appreciate about Hicks as a viewer, was his total restraint. He did not overexplain the break or scream into the microphone to make the moment about himself. As Golf Digest’s Joel Beall later noted, Hicks simply turned to us at home, asked his famous question, and gave the moment back to Woods.
That instinct was at the core of how Hicks viewed his job. As he explained to GOLF.com, his ultimate goal was never to lecture viewers, but “to enhance the audience’s perspective of what they’re watching, and for all of us, all of our announcers, to kind of have a conversation with the audience.”
On-course reporter Roger Maltbie later recalled telling Hicks that everyone around the 18th expected Tiger to sink the putt because of his invincible aura at the time. By asking “Expect anything different?”, Hicks tapped into that exact feeling, giving us permission to experience the absolute inevitability of the moment. It was not a boast on Woods’ behalf, but a shared acknowledgment of the extraordinary standard Tiger had set for us all.
The Voice Behind the Call
That conversational, collaborative instinct was Hicks’ signature. Over his 34 years with NBC Sports—after joining in 1992 and becoming the lead golf announcer in 2000—he never treated the broadcast booth as a stage for his own ego. Instead, he made it feel like we were just hanging out with him and the crew.
His nearly two-decade partnership with Miller was the soundtrack to so many of my weekends. Miller was the blunt critic, and Hicks was the smooth, calming presence holding it all together. Throw in Maltbie reporting from the fairways, and it was the perfect mix. Maltbie always called Hicks the point guard of the broadcast because he knew exactly how to set his analysts up and keep us engaged.
A Personal Goodbye
The tributes pouring in from his colleagues reflect exactly what we felt through the screen: genuine warmth. Seeing Maltbie struggle to hold back tears on air, admitting that losing Hicks felt like losing a pal, hit incredibly hard. The PGA Tour noted that the warmth he brought to broadcasts was matched only by his kindness off-camera, while Storm remembered her husband of over 30 years as a loving father to their three daughters and a cherished friend.
It is hard to hear “Expect anything different?” today without feeling the heavy weight of his absence. The call was never just about a putt; it was about Hicks’ unique gift for capturing what a moment meant before the rest of us could find the words. Golf has lost a voice that knew when to speak, when to listen, and when to just let the game say everything. For those of us who spent countless Sunday afternoons listening to him, the silence is going to take a long time to get used to.