[ad_1]
Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez, the Hall of Fame golfer whose antics on the greens and inspiring life story made him one of the most beloved athletes in the sport during a long career, died Thursday.
He was 88 years old.
Rodriguez’s death was announced by Senator Carmelo Javier Rios of Rodriguez’s native Puerto Rico.
He did not disclose the cause of death.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement: “ZiZi Rodriguez’s passion for philanthropy and outreach was surpassed only by his incredible talent with a golf club in hand. He was a vibrant and colorful individual both on and off the course, and he will be deeply missed by the PGA Tour and those who were impacted by him in his mission to give back. The PGA Tour extends its deepest condolences to the entire Rodriguez family during this difficult time.”
Born Juan Antonio Rodríguez in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, he was the second of six children, helping his father harvest sugar cane in what was then a sugarcane field.
The area is now a dense urban landscape and is part of San Juan, the capital of the U.S. island territory.
Rodriguez said he learned to play golf by hitting tin cans with a guava stick and later found a job as a caddie.
He claimed he could shoot 67 at age 12, according to a biography provided by 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, winning eight times during his 21-year career and playing in the Ryder Cup.
The first of his eight tour titles came in 1963, when he won the Denver Open.
He played two more tournaments the following year and in 1979 he competed in the Tallahassee Open.
He won 22 times on the Champions Tour from 1985 to 2002, with career earnings exceeding $7.6 million. In 1992, he was inducted into the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame.
Rodriguez is perhaps best known for his antics on the fairway, including spinning his club like a sword, sometimes called the “matador move,” or doing a celebratory dance after a birdie putt, often complete with salsa steps. He often imitates other players, something he insists is just 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 an interview with The Associated Press in 1999. “Jim Anderson (his pilot) drove me to the hospital, where a team of doctors were waiting to do the surgery. If I waited 10 minutes longer, the doctors said I would need a heart transplant.”
“They call it the widow maker,” he said. “About 50 percent of people who get this heart condition die. So I was lucky enough to beat the odds.”
After recovering, he returned to competition for a few years but gradually stepped away from his professional career to devote more time to community and charitable activities, such as the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation, a charity he founded in 1979 in Clearwater, Florida.
He has spent much of his time in recent years in Puerto Rico, where he served as a partner in a golf community project that has struggled amid the recession and housing crisis, hosted a talk show on a local radio station for several years and appeared at various sports and other events.
He showed up at the 2008 Puerto Rico Open wearing a black leather coat and sunglasses, strolling through the grounds, shaking hands and posing for photos, but not playing golf. “I don’t want to take away from the young people who are trying to make a living,” he said.
Rodriguez’s survivors include his wife of nearly 60 years, Iwalani, and his daughter, Donnette, from a previous marriage.
[ad_2]
Source link
