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It’s all but impossible to find a musician more entwined in the sports world than Darius Rucker. The 51-year-old singer, known for his baritone vocals as the leader of pop-rock band Hootie & the Blowfish in the ’90s and more recently as a country solo act, routinely appears at major sporting events, performing at large-scale corporate tailgate parties, singing the national anthem or, at times, all of the above.
Hootie formed in Columbia, S.C., the result of college buddies at the University of South Carolina teaming up to start a band. Rucker and his bandmates made no secret of their sports passion when their debut, “Cracked Rear View,” began to spawn hit singles in 1994. Soon enough, they began meeting prominent athletes and neither Rucker nor his bandmates ever looked back.
While the band plays together on an occasional basis these days, they still host what has become a two-decades-and-counting Palmetto State tradition: the Monday After The Masters celebrity pro-am. The event raises money for children’s charities and junior golf across South Carolina.
Rucker loves all sports — and anything involving his alma mater’s Gamecocks teams — but golf is a constant. He’s a member of multiple clubs in and around Charleston, plays most days whether at home or on tour and, since last summer, hosts a monthly show on SiriusXM’s PGA Tour Radio.
You recently interviewed Jack Nicklaus for your SiriusXM golf show. What was that like?
It was unbelievable. I’ve been doing this radio show for a while now and I’ve had some great guests, but to have Jack Nicklaus on my show was incredible. And the best thing about it was the conversation. It was a conversation between friends.
You’ve always been a big sports guy. How did that come about?
I remember being a 5-year-old kid and watching the Miami Dolphins play the Dallas Cowboys in the Super Bowl (1972) and the Dolphins lost and I cried. And I’ve been a Dolphins fan ever since. (A verse in Rucker’s 1994 Hootie & the Blowfish hit “Only Wanna Be With You” includes the lyrics, “Sometimes you’re crazy and you wonder why/I’m such a baby ’cause the Dolphins make me cry.”)
Why do you think you’ve been able to strike up so many relationships with people in sports?
It really started back when we first started getting big. They were doing our third video, for “Only Wanna Be With You.” We sit in the meeting and [the record label people] go, “So, what do you guys want to do for the third video?” And I looked them in the eye and said, “I want to meet Dan Marino.” That was my prerequisite for the video. So, we made this cool video where we had golfers and Marino and NBA players and we just started meeting people and hanging out with people.
If you had told me that I would have been to 16 of the last 20 Super Bowls, I would’ve told you you’re crazy.
Darius Rucker
You made the cut this year at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Where does that rank in your favorite pro-am moments?
That was my favorite moment. That was a great feeling. That was, like, my eighth time playing. I was the new Jack Lemmon. (The late actor, according to Golf Digest, tried and failed for 25 years to make the cut at Pebble Beach.)
How did Monday After The Masters start?
The growth of it, I can’t even explain. We were these kids and we had this big record and we were living in Columbia, S.C., and South Carolina Junior Golf had done [this benefit] maybe twice. And they asked if we wanted to get involved. We thought we might do this for a year, maybe five years. We were starting to become friends with people. Dan Marino was a buddy and we said, yeah, we’ll do it. We decided to do it and we had fun and now, 23 years later, it’s the biggest one-day charity event in South Carolina every year.
You performed in Atlanta this year as part of the football national championship weekend, and you were part of the Super Bowl LII tailgate in Minneapolis a month later. How did you turn your career into an excuse to go to games?
I love it. When I was a kid, if you had told me that I would have been to 16 of the last 20 Super Bowls, I would’ve told you you’re crazy. Or I’ve been to the national championship game. I got to sing the national anthem at the World Series [in 1995]. I got to sing the national anthem at the NBA Finals [in 2013]. Those are things that I still can’t believe as a kid from Charleston who got really lucky a couple of times.
You’ve performed the anthem many times. What do you think of players kneeling or protesting?
I went to London to sing for the Dolphins-Saints game [in 2017] and, for me, people can protest the way they want. I understand exactly what they’re protesting, and I back them up 100 percent, I get it. For me, the way I was raised, I couldn’t do it. But I understand why they’re doing it.
So, you’ve been all these places, what’s on your bucket list for sports performances?
I would kill to do the anthem at the Super Bowl. That’s been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. Of course, I’d love to play halftime at the Super Bowl. Everyone wants to do that. Last year, I sang the anthem at the Presidents Cup, in front of three presidents and Jack Nicklaus and Tiger [Woods] and Gary Player and Fred Couples. That was an amazing thing.
So, have you given Fergie a call — what do you think about her version [at the NBA All-Star Game in February]?
I love Fergie, I do, but that was something to behold. That was something to behold.
Erik Spanberg writes for the Charlotte Business Journal, an affiliated publication.
