Juan Antonio “Chi Chi” Rodriguez, the 1989 recipient of the USGA’s Bob Jones Award and one of the most admired players, entertainers and humanitarians in the game, died on Aug. 8 at the age of 88.
Rodriguez grew up as the youngest of six children in Rio Pedras, Puerto Rico, and started working along his father in a sugar cane plantation at age 7. He also gravitated toward athletics as a child, seeing it as a path to a better life. He was a standout youth baseball player, which was the source of his eventual nickname: He idolized a baseball player in San Juan named Chi Chi Flores, and his friends started calling him by the name.
His exposure to golf began when he started working as a caddie at age 8, teaching himself the game by swinging at rolled-up tin cans with a guava tree branch. From these humble beginnings rose a player who became a fan favorite.
“Chi Chi Rodriguez was one of the most gifted shotmakers and colorful personalities in the game's history,” said USGA CEO Mike Whan. “He made golf fun, loved people and his generosity made this world a far better place. There is no higher compliment than that.”
After serving in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956, Rodriguez returned to Puerto Rico and was determined to have a career in golf. He took a job as the caddie master at the famed Dorado Beach Resort, where he was able to work on his game. Rodriguez turned professional in 1960, and despite being just 5 feet, 7 inches tall and barely 125 pounds, began to have an outsized impact on the fledgling PGA Tour.
In addition to his prodigious length off the tee and deft short game, Rodriguez was a natural showman, known for covering the hole with his straw hat after making a birdie – “so the birdie doesn’t fly away,” he once said – and waving his putter like a swordsman after holing out. Some of the more reserved players on tour didn’t know what to make of his performative antics at first, but fans loved it and Rodriguez soon gained the respect and admiration of his peers.
Rodriguez won his first event, the Denver Open, in 1963 and bought his mother a house with the prize money. He notched seven more PGA Tour titles through 1979 and earned a spot on the victorious 1973 U.S. Ryder Cup team. His best performance in a major came in the 1981 U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa. Before the final round, he pledged his prize money to Mother Teresa if he won. Rodriguez finished T-6, but he demonstrated how golf’s grandest stage could be used as a platform for inspiring charitable deeds.
