- Juan Rodriguez was a popular PGA Tour golfer and eight-time champion
- Rodriguez leaves behind his wife Iwalani, with whom he was married for almost 60 years.
Golf legend Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez has died at the age of 88.
The Hall of Famer’s death — the cause of death has not yet been announced — was announced by a senator in Puerto Rico, Rodriguez’s home country.
The eight-time champion was mourned by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who called Rodriguez a “vibrant, colorful personality.”
“Chi Chi Rodriguez’s passion for charity and community service was surpassed only by his incredible talent with a golf club in hand,” Monahan said in a statement.
“He was a vibrant, colorful personality both on and off the golf course. He will be sorely missed by the PGA Tour and all whose lives he touched with his mission to give back. The PGA Tour extends its deepest condolences to the entire Rodriguez family during this difficult time.”
Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez participates in the Maestro Cares Foundation’s 2022 Celebrity Golf Tournament at the Biltmore Hotel Miami-Coral Gables
Rodriguez, born Juan Antonio Rodriguez, became a popular PGA Tour golfer with his antics on the green and his inspiring life story.
He was the second eldest of six children in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, when the town was still covered in sugar cane fields and he helped his father with the harvest as a child.
Rodriguez said he learned to play golf by hitting tin cans with a guava wood stick and then worked as a caddy. He claimed to be able to shoot 67 at age 12, according to a biography published by the Chi Chi Rodriguez Management Group in Stow, Ohio.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957, joined the PGA Tour in 1960 and won eight times during his 21-year career, including playing for a Ryder Cup team.
The first of his eight tour victories came in 1963 when he won the Denver Open. He followed that up with two more victories the following year and continued with the Tallahassee Open in 1979. From 1985 to 2002, he won 22 Champions Tour tournaments and earned more than $7.6 million in total career earnings. He was inducted into the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.
Rodriguez was perhaps best known for his fairway antics, where he would twirl his club like a sword, sometimes referred to as his “matador routine,” or perform a victory dance after a birdie putt, often with a shuffling salsa step. He often imitated his fellow players, which he stressed was meant as good-natured fun.
In October 1998, he was hospitalized for chest pains and reluctantly agreed to see a doctor, who told him he had suffered 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, and a team of doctors was waiting to operate on me. If I had waited 10 minutes longer, the doctor said I would have needed a heart transplant.”
Rodriguez was an eight-time PGA Tour champion, his first victory coming in 1963
“They call it the widowmaker,” he said. “About 50 percent of people who have a heart attack like that die. So I’m pretty sure I beat the odds.”
After his recovery, he returned to competition for several years, but ended his professional career and devoted more time to community and charitable activities, such as the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation, a charitable foundation based in Clearwater, Florida, founded in 1979.
In recent years he has spent most of his time in Puerto Rico, where he was a partner in a golf community project that was struggling with the recession and housing crisis. He also hosted a talk show on a local radio station for several years and appeared at various sporting and other events.
He showed up at the 2008 Puerto Rico Open, strolling the grounds in a black leather coat and dark sunglasses, shaking hands and posing for photographs but not playing golf. “I didn’t want to take away a spot from young men who are trying to make a living,” he said.
Rodriguez leaves behind Iwalani, his wife of nearly 60 years, and Donnette, his wife’s daughter from a previous marriage.
