Chi Chi Rodriguez, an eight-time PGA Tour winner and one of the most charismatic and beloved figures in pro golf, has died at age 88, according to a story by noticel.com.
Small in stature, Rodriguez was a big hitter off the tee and one of its great entertainers. His comedic antics included placing his hat over holes to keep birdies from flying away. He said he developed his Mexican hat dance ritual because he once sank a putt and a toad in the hole made the ball pop out. His opponent wouldn’t count it and he lost a nickel so he began trapping the ball in the hole with his hat. Some thought he was too much of a hot dog but the fans loved it and he attracted some of its largest galleries.
“Some of the players objected to me putting my hat over the hole so former Commissioner Joe Dey asked me to stop,” Rodriguez told the L.A. Times.
Ever the showman, he conceived an even more memorable act. Rodriguez saved his matador sword routine for after sinking big putts, pretending the hole to be a bull and his putter a sword. He stabbed the air before wiping it clean with his handkerchief and returning his putter into his imaginary scabbard along his belt.
“I wanted to do something, so I came up with the conquering the bull routine,” he said.
Born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 23, 1935, he nearly died at age four from rickets and tropical sprue, a chronic deficiency disease. Named Juan Antonio Rodriguez, he picked up the nickname Chi Chi as a kid when he played baseball.
“When I was growing up in Puerto Rico, I was a baseball player,” he once explained. “My idol was a player named Chi Chi Flores. I would go around saying, ‘I’m Chi Chi Flores.’ Pretty soon all the kids are calling me Chi Chi and I’ve been Chi Chi ever since.”
His PGA Tour bio notes that he worked as a caddie in his native country, and he learned to play
golf by smacking a tin can with a guava tree limb, hoping it would someday lead him away from plowing cane fields behind an ox for $1 a day. He enlisted in the U.S. Army at the age of 19 to fight in the Korean War.
“Dad told me I was a man now because I had finally made a decision myself,” Rodriguez once said.
Chi Chi Rodriguez and Jack Nicklaus at the 1994 Diners Club Matches.
He turned pro in 1960 and notched his first PGA Tour win came at the 1963 Denver Open Invitational. He was 28. He also won the 1964 Lucky International Open, the 1964 Western Open, the 1967 Texas Open, the 1968 Sahara Invitational, the…
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