Dan Hicks dead at 64: the NBC Sports broadcaster who called Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps died on Wednesday, 11 November 2026, his wife Hannah Storm announced on Thursday, 12 November 2026.
According to ESPN, Storm, an ESPN anchor, announced on X that Hicks died after an acute illness, saying the family was “heartbroken by the sudden and unexpected passing”. Hicks died in Connecticut, and no further details about the illness have been released.
Dan Hicks dead: Who was the NBC broadcaster?
Hicks, a native of Tucson, Arizona, joined NBC Sports in 1992 after working as a sports anchor at CNN. He became NBC’s lead golf play-by-play announcer in 2000, anchoring coverage of the US Open, The Open Championship, the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup and the US Women’s Open.
He called Notre Dame football from 2013 to 2016 and again from 2024, making the 2026 season his seventh, and called the French Open. He won a Sports Emmy for NBC’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Games, ESPN reported.
Dan Hicks dead: What were his most famous calls?
Hicks covered 16 Olympic Games, 15 of them as a play-by-play announcer. His most recent assignment was Alpine skiing at the 2026 Milan Cortina Games. He called swimming at eight Games and told a podcast he had called all 28 of Phelps’s Olympic medal races.
His best-known swimming call came at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he described the US 4×100-metre freestyle relay comeback against France that kept alive Phelps’s bid for a record eight gold medals. In golf, he narrated Tiger Woods’s 12-foot putt at the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines, which forced a playoff, with the words:
Expect anything different?
What have colleagues said about Dan Hicks?
Woods won the third US Open of his career the following day. NBC Sports’ Rick Cordella, Sam Flood and Molly Solomon called Hicks “an extraordinary colleague, friend and person”, saying he welcomed teammates with a smile, a joke or a word of encouragement.
Mike Tirico, who worked alongside Hicks at NBC for 10 years after joining the network from ESPN in 2016, paid tribute to him on air on Thursday, 12 November 2026. His first NBC assignment was The Open, alongside Hicks and analyst Johnny Miller, and he said of Hicks:
He had more big moments on his plate and nailed every big moment.
Al Michaels read a tribute on air during the Thursday Night Football broadcast, describing Hicks as having a “world-class sense of humor”. Phelps wrote on Instagram that Hicks had “a voice that will forever be part of my story”.
Storm called Hicks “truly one of a kind”, a devoted husband and a loving father to their three daughters, Hannah, Ellery and Riley. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said the network was deeply saddened by the sudden passing of a respected voice in sports broadcasting.
Tirico told Phelps that Hicks used to marvel at his path from weekend sports anchor at the NBC affiliate in his hometown of Tucson to the top of his profession. He would remark that he had called both Woods and Phelps at the height of their careers.
Sources
- ESPN, Longtime sports broadcaster Dan Hicks dies at age 64 (12 November 2026)
- Yahoo Sports, Dan Hicks dies, longtime voice of NBC Sports (12 November 2026)
- Yahoo Sports, Mike Tirico mourns death of Dan Hicks: 'He nailed every big moment' (12 November 2026)
- Awful Announcing, Al Michaels gets choked up while reading tribute to Dan Hicks (13 November 2026)
- Sport & State, Emotional Michael Phelps remembers late friend Dan Hicks (12 November 2026)
- The Spun, Michael Phelps reacts to Dan Hicks' shocking death at 64 (12 November 2026)
- 5th News, Al Michaels chokes up on live TV as he joins Mike Tirico in paying an emotional tribute to Dan Hicks (13 November 2026)
