AUGUSTA, Ga. — As catchphrases go, Jim Nantz’s “Hello, friends,” is, well, to borrow from another go-to expression, “Better than most.”
He’s delivered it for countless voicemail messages as well as in an episode of the former hit CBS show “How I Met Your Mother.” So, how did Nantz coin his signature phrase? There’s a good story behind it that dates to almost 20 years ago.
Nantz was as close as father and son could be, and so it came as no surprise that he embraced helping his father, Jim II, endure Alzheimer’s with both strength and grace. It was important to Nantz that his voice be in his father’s room, so he made sure his father’s assisted-living center in Houston always had his TV schedule. On his way to the 2002 PGA Championship, Nantz visited his dad and told him he was going to deliver a special coded message in the broadcast for him.
With an ever-present smile, a booming voice and a gift for gab, Nantz’s father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1995 and died in 2008, always owned a room. During the opening to the Saturday show, Nantz started the telecast by saying “Hello, friends,” an homage to his Pops, who had a knack for making fast friends.
The salutation struck a chord with Eli Spielman, Nantz’s friend and co-author of his book, “Always By My Side: The Healing Gift of a Father’s Love.” He phoned Nantz and advised him to use the expression again at the top of the next broadcast.
“If he didn’t make that call, it probably would’ve been a one-and-done,” Nantz says of what has become his catchphrase. “I’ve used it almost every broadcast ever since. It’s not some made-up corn-ball saying; it has meaning to me and it has meaning every time I say it on the air. When I say it looking into that dark hole, that big lens, I feel my dad’s presence. It calms me.”
Amongst the pines. #themasters pic.twitter.com/if0V4j58Ua
— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 9, 2022
The long goodbye – 13 years in this case – of watching a loved one disappear before his eyes, and not being able to do a thing about it, inspired Nantz to channel his passion into trying to find a cure. In 2011, the Nantz National Alzheimer’s Center at Houston Methodist Hospital opened and has become a leader in the fight against the debilitating disease.
When Nantz opens the broadcast of the 86th Masters on CBS this weekend with those famous two words, it will have greater meaning to him than one could ever have imagined.
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