Kiki Rodriguez smiles while signing autographs at Nashatuck Country Club on June 9, 2006 in Concord, Massachusetts.
Steven Sene/AP
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Steven Sene/AP
Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez was a Hall of Fame golfer whose antics on the greens and inspiring life story set him apart during a long career , who became one of the most beloved players in the sport, died Thursday. He is 88 years old.
Rodriguez’s death was announced by Senator Carmelo Javier Rios of Rodriguez’s home state of Puerto Rico. He did not provide a cause of death.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement: “Kiki Rodriguez’s passion for charity and outreach is only as incredible as a golf club in his hand. “He was a vibrant, colorful personality both on and off the golf course and will be deeply missed by the PGA Tour and those touched by his mission to give back. In this difficult time. At this time, the PGA Tour extends its deepest condolences to the entire Rodriguez family.
He was born Juan Antonio Rodriguez, the second of six children, in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, which was then covered with sugar cane fields and he helped his father harvest the crops as a child. The area is now a dense urban landscape and is part of the U.S. island territory’s capital city of San Juan.
Rodriguez said he learned to play golf by hitting a tin can with a guava stick and then got a job as a caddy. According to a biography provided by the Chi Chi Rodriguez Management Group in Stow, Ohio, he claimed to have shot a 67 when he was 12 years old.
No one from Puerto Rico had ever played on the PGA Tour, and Rodriguez was determined not only to get there, but to beat the best. “They tell me I’m a hound who dreams about pork chops,” he once told Sports Illustrated.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1955-57 and joined the PGA Tour in 1960, winning eight times with a Ryder Cup team during a 21-year career.
The first of his eight tour victories came in 1963, when he won the Denver Open. He competed in two more tournaments the following year and continued to compete in the Tallahassee Open through 1979. From 1985 to 2002, he won 22 times on the Champions Tour and had career earnings of more than $7.6 million. In 1992, he was inducted into the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame.
His playing record doesn’t look like Hall of Fame material. He has made tremendous contributions to the sport through his acting skills, philanthropy and dedication to youth development.
In the 1970s, he founded a children’s academy in the Tampa, Florida, area that focused on those at risk. “Why do I like children so much? Because I was never a child myself. I was too poor to have a real childhood.
His sense of humor never faded. He was passionate about baseball, and when the 1996 U.S. Senior Open was held in Canterbury, outside of Cleveland, he was asked why he gave up the sport. “I used to steal bases all the time,” Rodriguez said, as the room erupted in laughter.
Rodriguez is perhaps best known for his fairway antics, including twirling his club like a sword, sometimes called the “matador move,” or performing a celebratory dance after a birdie putt, often accompanied by a drag Salsa dance steps. He often irritates other players, which he insists is done out of good-natured fun.
In October 1998, he was hospitalized with chest pains and reluctantly agreed to see a doctor, who told him he was having a heart attack.
“I was scared for the first time,” Rodriguez recalled in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press. “Jim Anderson (his pilot) drove me to the hospital where a group of doctors were waiting for surgery. If I had waited another 10 minutes, the doctors said I would need a heart transplant.
“They call them widowmakers,” he said. “About 50 percent of people who have a heart attack die. So I overcame it pretty well.
After recovery, he returned to the game for a few years, but gradually wound down his career and devoted more time to community and charitable activities, such as the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation, a Charity of Clearwater, Florida, in 1979.
In recent years, he has spent much of his time in Puerto Rico, where he was a partner in a golf community project struggling with the recession and housing crisis and hosted a talk show on a local radio station for several years. programs and appear at various sporting and other events.
He showed up at the 2008 Puerto Rico Open, strolling the course wearing a black fur coat and sunglasses, shaking hands and posing for photos, but not playing golf. “I don’t want to take away the space from young people who are trying to make a living,” he said.
