World Golf Hall of Fame member Chi Chi Rodriguez dies at age 88 - PGA TOUR (2024)

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World Golf Hall of Fame member Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez was a giver on and off the golf course. Inside the ropes, Rodriguez was a showman. After great shots, fans would marvel at his signature “sword dance” when Rodriguez would wield a golf club and thrust his “sword” back into its imaginary scabbard along his belt. Outside of golf, Rodriguez was known for his tireless philanthropy.

Rodriguez came from humble roots in Puerto Rico to collect 30 career victories between the PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions. He took as much pride in his Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation in Clearwater, Florida, that helped at-risk youth achieve academic, social and economic success.

“A man never stands taller than when he stoops to help a child,” he said in his World Golf Hall of Fame biography when he was enshrined in 1992.

Few, then, stood taller than Rodriguez – the greatest golfer produced by Puerto Rico – who passed away Thursday, Aug. 8, at age 88.

Rodriguez’s memory will live on at his Youth Foundation, which each year brings in 600 children from low-income families or broken homes to its municipal course to develop skills like responsibility and work ethic. His altruistic nature culminated in 1989 with the USGA’s highest honor, the Bob Jones Award, and later his acceptance into the World Humanitarian Sports Hall of Fame in 1994.

“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.”

Rodriguez’s pathway into servitude was shaped by a childhood less fortunate than others. His father worked tirelessly cutting sugar cane with a machete in Rodriguez’s hometown of Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, yet never made more than $18 in a given week. By the time he was 7, Rodriguez joined his father in hard labor, earning money as a water carrier on a plantation. It came just three years after the youngest and frailest of six children nearly died from rickets and tropical sprue.

It was then that the young Rodriguez realized athletic abilities would bestow upon him rare opportunities not afforded to most others. After wandering onto a golf course, Rodriguez discovered caddies were earning more money than he was – so he decided to become one himself.

Chi Chi Rodriguez shares meaning behind ‘sword dance’

He took a branch from a guava tree and fashioned it into a makeshift golf club. Using hammered tin cans as balls, Rodriguez was able to teach himself the sport, modeling his game after what he saw golfers do. In 1960, after a two-year stint in the Army to make more money – “It was more than I could make caddying at Dorado Beach,” he said jokingly in the PGA TOUR media guide – he finally decided to turn professional.

Though he had long since traded in his guava branch for a set of irons, Rodriguez never lost sight of what brought him to the TOUR in the first place – a challenging upbringing that gave him a unique perspective on not only the game of golf, but life itself.

“You’ve got to be different,” he said in an interview with Golf.com. “You’ve got to be yourself in the world. That’s what I always wanted to be.”

From his first TOUR win in 1963 to his final PGA TOUR Champions triumph in 1993, Rodriguez stood by that mantra. After making a birdie putt, golf fans could often see him drop his hat over the hole “so the little birdie won’t fly away.”

“The people come out and pay good money to see golf," he said. "I think they deserve something extra, and I like to give it to them."

“Chi Chi feels so lucky, is so proud of what he's done, is so thankful, that he has to give something back,” Doug Sanders told Sports Illustrated in a 1987 interview. “The sword dance, the jokes, the hat, the bright clothes, the way he helps kids and everybody else, it just comes down to saying, ‘Look at me. You didn't think I could make it. But I did. In spite of everything. Now let me share it with you.’”

Rodriguez encountered middling success in his first three years on TOUR, never finishing higher than sixth in any event. But he finally broke through in 1963, when he won the Denver Open Invitational by two strokes. He added a pair of wins a year later at the Lucky International Open (a playoff triumph over 10-time TOUR winner Don January) and at the Western Open, when he edged none other than Arnold Palmer by one stroke, thanks in part to an opening-round 64.

He’d only win twice more over the next seven years – the 1967 Texas Open Invitational (now the Valero Texas Open) and the 1968 Sahara Invitational – in what was arguably the most trying stretch of his professional career. He lost his exempt status in 1970 after finishing 74th on the official points list, likely as a result of the surgery he underwent on his arms.

Those childhood illnesses had left his bones thin and hypersensitive to pressure, he told Sports Illustrated, which would hurt him “three times more than someone else” if he was ever hit on the arms. He told the publication he had to take occasional vitamin B-12 shots and eat steak nearly every day in order to keep his strength up.

Temporarily removed from the game, Rodriguez discovered a newfound commitment that would indelibly shape the rest of his career. “I never really concentrated on the golf course,” he noted in the 1973 TOUR media guide. “I always wanted to be liked by everybody. I used to do a lot of things that took my mind off my game.”

By refocusing himself to strictly golf, Rodriguez managed to claim his most profitable year on TOUR in 1972, which saw him finish nine times in the top 10, including a playoff victory over Billy Casper in the Byron Nelson Golf Classic (now THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson). He earned more than $113,000 in winnings that season, his best year financially.

He added another win in 1973 at the Greater Greensboro Open (now the Wyndham Championship), the same year he was selected to the U.S. Ryder Cup team, before winning one final time on TOUR in 1979 at the Tallahassee Open.

With his PGA TOUR success behind him, Rodriguez managed to reinvent himself on PGA TOUR Champions, where he won 22 times between 1986 and 1993 – tied for seventh-most all-time. He was the first player to win the same event three straight years (the Digital Seniors Classic, from 1986 to 1988) and still holds the Champions Tour record for most consecutive birdies (eight, 1987 Silver Pages Classic).

He won at least one tournament every year from 1986 to 1993, something only six other players have managed to do, and is still the record-holder for consecutive victories, as he won four straight times in 1987 (Vantage at the Dominion, United Hospitals Classic, Silver Pages Classic and the Senior Players Reunion).

His Champions Tour tenure included a pair of major victories: the 1986 Senior Tournament Players Championship (now Kaulig Companies Championship) over Bruce Crampton, and the 1987 General Foods PGA Seniors’ Championship (now KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship) over Dale Douglass.

Humanitarian, champion, and Hall of Famer. Sure enough, from the branches of a guava tree to the roots of his Foundation, Rodriguez accomplished the goals he set out to achieve.

“In life, you have to have goals, and I have conquered most of my goals,” he told Golf.com. “I didn’t become the greatest golfer in the world, but I became the greatest Puerto Rican golfer.”