Jim Nantz paid $25,000 and another $656 to register two words as trademarks. This was not for branding or licensing. He did it because those words belonged to his father, and he was not willing to let anyone else claim them. The story began at his father’s bedside in Houston.

“I’m going to look into that camera, and I’m going to say, Hello Friends, and that’s for you, Dad, because you have nothing but friends.”

Jim Nantz has been calling the Masters for CBS since 1989. On the Vanity Index Podcast, published February 25, 2026, he revealed that “Hello, friends” began not as a broadcaster’s signature but as a private signal to his father, who was living with Alzheimer’s and had largely lost the ability to recognize him.

By 2002, Jim Nantz Sr. had been fighting Alzheimer’s for over a decade. Just before the PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club, Nantz sat with his father in Houston and made that promise.

The signal was never meant for the millions watching. It was meant for one person in a hospital room. Nantz made that explicit.

“That’s going to be my little trigger line to let you know that at that very moment I’m thinking of you.”

On the Saturday of the 2002 PGA Championship, Nantz stepped into the booth at Hazeltine, found the red tally light, and said the words. He expected to say it once. After the broadcast, a CBS colleague noticed and asked about it, saying it sounded like Nantz. He repeated it on Sunday. Since then, he has used it in every Masters and CBS golf major.

Some viewers have long assumed the greeting was a calculated broadcaster’s signature. Nantz addressed that directly.

“It had nothing to do with that,” he said. “It all had to do with trying to communicate with my father.” His father passed away in 2008. The phrase did not leave with him.

“I still think of him every single time I say, Hello Friends, and it relaxes me and I fall into the flow of the show.”

At Augusta, the phrase now opens every CBS weekend broadcast from the Butler Cabin. CBS golf analyst Mark Immelman has pointed out that while Nantz uses the greeting in other sports, golf has made “Hello, friends” its own. The Masters broadcast has given it a permanence no other event has matched.

The phrase now stands among golf broadcasting’s most recognized moments. Like many others, it was never planned.

Jim Nantz’s “Hello, friends” and golf’s history of unscripted broadcast signatures

In 1986, Verne Lundquist was covering the 17th hole at Augusta National when Jack Nicklaus sank a birdie putt during his final-round charge. “Maybe… Yes, sir!” came out entirely unrehearsed, with Lundquist unaware that fellow CBS broadcaster Ben Wright had already used the same words on the 15th. Nantz has called it the greatest call in Masters history.

Fifteen years later, at TPC Sawgrass, NBC’s Gary Koch watched Tiger Woods face a 60-foot triple-breaking putt at the island green on 17. When analyst Johnny Miller asked, “How’s that look?” Koch replied without preparation, “Johnny, that’s better than most.” He repeated the line twice more as the ball tracked home.

The pattern holds off the microphone, too. Composer Dave Loggins wrote the Masters theme “Augusta” after a single round at Augusta National in 1981, initially believing the piece would only be used once, with no idea it would become the longest-running sports theme in television history.

The red tally light is still there, every broadcast, every April at Augusta. For that flicker of a second, the greeting still goes out.