Johnny Miller's final golf broadcast is this week: 'I know it's time'

Johnny Miller does not fear boredom during his retirement from TV golf analysis – not with 24 grandchildren and hopes of getting his own golf game back into shape.

But he will face a major adjustment after he turns in his NBC microphone following Saturday’s third round of the Phoenix Open, as will viewers who have known him as the most distinctive voice in television golf over nearly three decades.

His longtime announcing partner will, too.

“This is a tough one, I'm not going to lie,” Dan Hicks said on a conference call to discuss Miller’s final broadcast. (He is not working the final round Sunday to avoid stepping into the active players’ spotlight.)

“This is going to be tough for me. I know Johnny feels it's time, like he's described, but when you've got something going this good for all this time you just want to keep it.”

Miller, 71, said he decided it was better to risk leaving too soon than too late, just as he did as a player. He semi-retired to join NBC in 1990, when he was 43.

“I know it's time,” he said. “I could feel it was time to step down, but I stepped down a little early in my playing career and started announcing, and I think maybe I've done the same thing here with my announcing career.”

Miller initially announced in October that he would leave in February.

“I’m looking forward to trying not to cry, basically,” he said. “There is a time and a season for everything. I'm looking forward to a really good attitude and a lot of gratefulness inside me for all the years of my playing career and announcing career.”

Miller is known for his blunt honesty in a sport that traditionally promotes gentlemanliness. Hicks said he “changed the landscape of the whole business of golf broadcasting, no doubt about that.”

Said Miller, “When you go to New York or Boston it's always, ‘Hey, Johnny, keep telling it like it is!’ That's what every guy says. People are starving for the truth. A lot of people don't want to go there. They don't want to go for truthful things that maybe sound like they're hurtful a little bit, but they're truths.

“That's why a guy like [Turner basketball analyst] Charles Barkley has been around. He says a lot of wild stuff, but people like unexpected things also, not just the standard things you expect the announcer to say.”

He added, “It's just the way I view golf. I always say the pressure and the choke factor in golf are by far the most interesting part of golf . . . Greatest game in the world to basically choke on.

“That's what makes for basically all those years of people announcing golf and were afraid to go there just to be sweet, I guess. Never really made sense to me. I used to choke. My putting choked. Bottom line is if you can produce at the end and win big championships and tournaments, that's the most gratifying thing to a player.”

Added Hicks, “You never knew what he was going to say. He used the word ‘unpredictable,’ and I think that's what keeps the audience on edge. They were always waiting to hear what he would say next.”

Asked to name his favorite calls, one Miller cited was Corey Pavin’s famous 4-wood at the 18th hole at the 1995 U.S. Open at Shinnecock.

“The ball hit and took one bounce,” Miller said. “I said, ‘He's hit the shot of his life.’ It wasn't anything planned, but turned out it was the greatest shot he ever hit.”

Hicks recalled Miller’s description of Phil Mickelson’s late meltdown at the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

Hicks has prepared an essay about Miller for Saturday, and NBC will present a segment looking back at Miller’s career.

In addition to his family, Miller is involved in several businesses. And then there’s his golf game.

“It’s been sort of a wild 50 years on the road since 1969,” he said. “I've been a busy guy in the game of golf. So I'll still try to see if I can get a little bit better at my golf. I've ignored it basically since I've been an announcer. Like to play nine holes once in a while. I am definitely going to be busy, no doubt about it.”

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.