- Juan Rodriguez was a popular PGA Tour golfer and eight-time champion.
- Rodriguez is survived by his wife of nearly 60 years, Iwalani.
Golf legend Juan ‘Chi Chi’ Rodriguez has passed away at the age of 88.
The Hall of Famer’s death, the cause of which has not yet been revealed, was announced by a senator from Puerto Rico, Rodriguez’s native country.
The eight-time champion was mourned by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who called Rodriguez a “vibrant and colorful personality.”
“Chi Chi Rodriguez’s passion for charity and outreach was only surpassed by her incredible talent with a golf club in hand,” Monahan said in a statement.
“He was a vibrant and colorful personality both on and off the golf course. He will be deeply missed 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 at this difficult time.”
Juan ‘Chi Chi’ Rodriguez attends the 2022 Maestro Cares Foundation Celebrity Golf Tournament at the Biltmore Miami-Coral Gables Hotel
Rodriguez, born Juan Antonio Rodriguez, became a popular PGA Tour golfer with his antics on the greens and his inspiring life story.
He was the second of six siblings, in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, when it was covered with sugar cane fields and where he helped his father with the harvest as a child.
Rodriguez said he learned to play golf by hitting cans with a guava stick and later found work as a caddy. He claimed he could shoot a 67 at age 12, according to a biography provided by the Chi Chi Rodriguez Management Group in Stow, Ohio.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957 and joined the PGA Tour in 1960 and won eight times during his 21-year career, playing on a Ryder Cup team.
The first of his eight Tour victories came in 1963, when he won the Denver Open. Two more followed the next year and he continued through 1979 with the Tallahassee Open. He earned 22 Champions Tour victories between 1985 and 2002, and had combined career earnings of more than $7.6 million. He was inducted into the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.
Rodriguez was perhaps best known for his fairway antics, which included twirling his club like a sword, sometimes referred to as his “matador routine,” or doing a celebratory dance, often with a shuffling salsa step, after making a birdie putt. He often imitated other players in what he said was meant as good-humored fun.
He was hospitalized in October 1998 after experiencing chest pains and reluctantly agreed to see a doctor, who told him he was having a heart attack.
“I got scared for the first time,” Rodriguez recalled in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press. “Jim Anderson (his pilot) took me to the hospital and a team of doctors was waiting to operate on me. If I had waited another 10 minutes, the doctor said I would have needed a heart transplant.
Rodriguez was an eight-time PGA Tour champion, with his first victory coming in 1963.
“They call it the ‘widowmaker,'” he said. “About 50 percent of people who have this type of heart attack die. So I beat the odds by far.”
Following her recovery, she returned to competition for a couple of years, but gradually gave up her professional career and devoted more time to community and charitable activities, such as the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation, a Clearwater, Florida-based charity founded in 1979.
In recent years, he spent most of his time in Puerto Rico, where he was a partner in a community golf project struggling amid the recession and housing crisis, hosted a talk show on a local radio station for several years, and appeared at various sporting and other events.
He appeared at the 2008 Puerto Rico Open and strolled around 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 a place away from young people trying to make a living,” he said.
Rodriguez is survived by Iwalani, his wife of nearly 60 years, and Donnette, his wife’s daughter from a previous marriage.