Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez, an eight-time PGA Tour winner and one of the most charismatic and beloved figures in pro golf, has died at age 88.
Rodriguez’s death was first announced by Carmelo Javier Rios, a member of the Senate in Puerto Rico. The cause of death has not yet been named. His death was also reported on the Puerto Rico Golf Association website.
Small in stature, Rodriguez was a big hitter off the tee and one of its great entertainers. His comedic antics included placing his hat over holes to keep birdies from flying away. He said he developed that ritual in which he danced the salsa because he once sank a putt and a toad in the hole made the ball pop out. His opponent wouldn’t count it and he lost a nickel so he began trapping the ball in the hole with his trademark fedora. Some thought he was too much of a hot dog but the fans loved it and he attracted some of its largest galleries.
“Some of the players objected to me putting my hat over the hole so former Commissioner Joe Dey asked me to stop,” Rodriguez told the L.A. Times.
Ever the showman, he conceived an even more memorable act. Rodriguez saved his matador sword routine for after sinking big putts, pretending the hole to be a bull and his putter a sword. He stabbed the air before wiping it clean with his handkerchief and returning his putter into his imaginary scabbard along his belt.
“I wanted to do something, so I came up with the conquering the bull routine,” he said.
Born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 23, 1935, he nearly died at age four from rickets and tropical sprue, a chronic deficiency disease. Named Juan Antonio Rodriguez, he picked up the nickname Chi Chi as a kid when he played baseball.
“When I was growing up in Puerto Rico, I was a baseball player,” he once explained. “My idol was a player named Chi Chi Flores. I would go around saying, ‘I’m Chi Chi Flores.’ Pretty soon all the kids are calling me Chi Chi and I’ve been Chi Chi ever since.”
His PGA Tour bio notes that he worked as a caddie in his native country, and he learned to play golf by smacking a tin can with a guava tree limb, hoping it would someday lead him away from plowing cane fields behind an ox for $1 a day. Inspired by the Korean War, he enlisted in the U.S. Army at the age of 19 and served two years from 1955-57.
“Dad told me I was a man now because I had finally made a decision myself,” Rodriguez once said.
He turned pro in 1960 and notched his first PGA Tour win came at the 1963 Denver Open Invitational. He was 28. He also won the 1964 Lucky International Open, the 1964 Western Open, the 1967 Texas Open, the 1968 Sahara Invitational, the 1972 Byron Nelson Classic, when he won a career-best $114,000, and the 1979 Tallahassee Open. He played in 591 events and made 422 cuts. He also was a member of the victorious 1973 U.S. Ryder Cup team.
He later played another 466 times on the PGA Tour Champions, winning 22 times on the senior circuit, including the 1986 Senior Players Championship and 1987 Senior PGA Championship, and at least one tournament every year from 1986 to 1993. He lost a memorable 18-hole playoff to Nicklaus at the 1991 U.S. Senior Open. In 2012, at the age of 76, Rodriguez participated, as an honorary player, in the Puerto Rico Open, his final official round on the Tour. His last professional start was in 2016.
Rodriguez was one of golf’s great humanitarians and was proud of his work with the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation, which he founded in 1979.
“Life is no good unless you share it, whether it’s money or love or compassion that you’re sharing,” he said.
Nearly 20 years before the First Tee was launched, Rodriguez started the model with an Academy in Clearwater, Florida, building a facility on a public par-3 course and began to educate at-risk youth between the fourth and eighth grades.
“We make them taxpayers instead of tax burdens,” Rodriguez told the Florida Times Union in 2016. “We make them executives instead of felons. Every day, the first thing we do is pledge allegiance to the flag because if they learn respect for the flag they can learn respect for themselves and for others.”
In 1989, he was awarded the Bob Jones Award, the U.S. Golf Association’s highest honor, for distinguished sportsmanship.
“For a little man like me to receive this greatest award in golf makes me feel 10 feet tall,” said the 5-foot-7 Rodriguez, who was listed at 132 pounds. He was overshadowed by the likes of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus but as one of golf’s leading global ambassadors he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992 and he remains the lone Puerto Rican, which he represented in 12 World Cups, in the Hall.
“Chi Chi Rodriguez’s passion for charity and outreach was surpassed only by his incredible talent with a golf club in his hand,” said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan. “A vibrant, colorful personality both on and off the golf course, he will be missed dearly by the PGA Tour and those whose lives he touched in his mission to give back. The PGA Tour sends its deepest condolences to the entire Rodriguez family during this difficult time.”