Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez, one of golf’s best and most animated players, died on Thursday at the age of 88.
“Chi Chi Rodriguez’s passion for charity and outreach was surpassed only by his incredible talent with a golf club in his hand,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “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.”
Rodriguez, a native of Puerto Rico, was one of six children who toiled alongside his family in the sugar cane fields near his home. From those modest beginnings, Rodriguez began learning the game of golf. His first swings were taken with a guava tree stick, and his first balls were tin cans. Rodriguez soon found work as a caddie and began a deeper study of the game he loved and would grow to master.
The mastering would not come easily, however. Rodriguez’s PGA TOur journey wasn’t simply unlikely because he grew up poor and worked in sugar cane fields. It was also unlikely because no one from Puerto Rico had ever made the Tour.
They told me I was a hound dreaming about pork chops,” he told Sports Illustrated.
Rodriguez began his PGA Tour career in 1960 after a two-year stint in the Army. He would notch his first victory in 1963. That would just be the beginning of a star-studded career in which the Puerto Rican native would win 22 times from 1985-2002. Rodriguez would win $7.6 million and was inducted into the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.
“Rodriguez was perhaps best known for fairway antics that included twirling his club like a sword, sometimes referred to as his ‘matador routine,’ or doing a celebratory dance, often with a shuffling salsa step, after making a birdie putt,” the Associated Press reported. He often irritated fellow players in what he insisted was meant as good-natured fun.
“He was hospitalized in October 1998 after experiencing chest pains and reluctantly agreed to see a doctor, who told him he was having a heart attack.”
Rodriquez spoke about the heart attack and the effect it had on him.
“It scared me for the first time,” Rodriguez told the Associated Press in 1999. “Jim Anderson (his pilot) drove me to the hospital, and a team of doctors were waiting to operate. If I had waited another 10 minutes, the doctor said I would have needed a heart transplant.”
After his health scare, Rodriguez devoted his time to charitable events and hosted his own talk show.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.