Tragedy loss: Legend of golf, Juan Chi Chi Rodriguez is leaving -it is remembered for victory and charismatic in life, course.”
JUAN “CHI CHI” Rodriguez, one of the eight winners of the PGA tour and one of the most charismatic and favorite people in professional golf, died at the age of 88.
JUAN “CHI CHI” Rodriguez, one of the eight winners of the PGA tour and one of the most charismatic and favorite people in professional golf, died at the age of 88. 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.
Chi Chi Rodriguez, the Golf World’s Swashbuckling Champion, Dies at 88
He won eight PGA Tour tournaments and two senior majors — but it was his flair on the greens that made him one of the sport’s most popular players. A golfer in the middle of a putt, wearing a white hat and a brightly colored floral shirt.
Chi-Chi Rodriguez at the 1994 PGA Senior Championships in Florida. ChiChi Rodriguez, whose brilliant talent on the course and passion for the game made him one of the most popular players in the game during more than three decades on the professional tour, has died. He was 88. His death was announced by Carmelo Javier Rios Santiago, a member of the Puerto Rican Senate and the PGA Tour. The cause of death or other details were not provided. In the sports played at the rush country club, Rodriguez broke the mold, with a pulse that represents respect, often comfortable roots and bland players.
The boy, known as a Chichi, has begun to have a framework in the class that attracts rich tourists. He taught himself to play using limbs from guava trees to propel crushed tin cans into holes he had dug on baseball fields, and at age 12 he shot a 67 in a real game of golf. After playing in Puerto Rican tournaments, he joined the PGA Tour in 1960. Rodriguez was 1.70m tall and weighed about 54kg, but he used strong hands and wrists to hit long, low drives and was an exceptional wedge player, which made up for a sometimes shaky putting game. “For a little guy, he sure can hit it,” Jack Nicklaus told Sports Illustrated in 1964, describing how Rodriguez often beat him off the tee on flat, windswept fairways.
Rodriguez won eight events on the PGA Tour, then became one of the top players on the Senior (now Champions) Tour, winning 22 tournaments, including two majors, the 1986 Senior Players Championship and the 1987 Senior PGA Championship. Introduced in Golf of the World’s reputation in 1992.
And he rarely played with an appointment. To make the bird, he hid the holes with a thin straw hat and performed a bullfighter’s dance.
“One morning, we were playing for 5 cents a hole,” he once told People magazine, recalling his first match with another caddie. “I made a 40-foot putt and there was a toad in the hole. He jumped and the ball went with him. “I lost the nickel.” This prompted him to make sure his ball would never again prematurely escape—or so the story goes.
After making a difficult putt, Rodriguez would also transform his putter into a simulated sword thrown at a bull, then wipe imaginary blood off it and place it in an invisible sheath. Chi-Chi Rodriguez performs a sword dance at the 1990 Security Pacific Senior Classic. Photo: Mike Powell/Allsport via Getty Images
His theatrical nature and chatter with the gallery didn’t endear him to some of his playing partners.
In October 1970, during the Kaiser Open in California, Rodriguez was fined $200 by the PGA after Dave Hill complained that Rodriguez had distracted him when he tried to entertain the crowd by pretending to hit golf balls with a bunker rake. Rodriguez always maintained that he meant no disrespect to the game, but as he once said, “Golf is show business. I like to make people laugh.”
Despite all his success, Rodriguez never forgot his roots, having been inspired to help others by his father’s generosity toward those who had even less than him. After visiting a Florida juvenile detention center for a golf game, he vowed to do more. In 1979, he founded and contributed significantly to the funding of the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation, which provides counseling, educational and vocational training to disadvantaged students. The Clearwater Complex in Clearwater, Florida, now includes a public-private academy for fourth through eighth graders.
“I love kids because I was never a kid,” Rodriguez once said. “I was too poor to be a child.”
