Juan “Chi Chi” Rodríguez was more than a champion golfer. He was a showman, a philanthropist and, for generations of Puerto Ricans, proof that a child from the humblest beginnings could reach the very top of the game. Chi Chi Rodríguez died on August 8, 2024, in Clearwater, Florida, at the age of 88. More than two years later, his influence is still visible across Caribbean golf, from the players who cite him as an inspiration to the youth foundation he built in Florida.
A childhood shaped by hardship
Rodríguez was born on October 23, 1935, in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, the youngest of six children. His father cut sugar cane for a weekly wage that the PGA Tour put at no more than $18. As a small child he survived serious illness, and by age seven he was working on a plantation carrying water.
Golf entered his life through caddying, which paid better than the fields. With no equipment of his own, he taught himself by fashioning a club from a guava branch and hitting tin cans. He later served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956 and turned professional in 1960.
Chi Chi Rodríguez on the PGA Tour
Rodríguez won eight times on the PGA Tour between 1963 and 1979, beginning with the 1963 Denver Open Invitational. He earned a place on the 1973 U.S. Ryder Cup team, and he became one of the most recognisable personalities in the sport.
Much of that recognition came from his flair. After holing a birdie putt, he would wield his putter like a sword, flourish it and slide it into an imaginary scabbard, the celebration that became known as his sword dance. Earlier in his career he would drop his hat over the hole after a birdie, joking that it stopped the “little birdie” from flying away. To some traditionalists it was unusual; to galleries it was irresistible.
A second act on the senior tour
If his regular-tour career made him famous, his senior career made him one of the era’s most consistent winners. Rodríguez claimed 22 titles on what is now PGA Tour Champions between 1986 and 1993, a total that ranks tied for seventh all-time. He won at least once in every one of those eight seasons, and in 1987 he set a record with four consecutive victories.
His senior résumé included two major championships: the 1986 Senior Tournament Players Championship and the 1987 General Foods PGA Seniors’ Championship.
Honours and a lasting foundation
In 1992, Rodríguez was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, the first Puerto Rican to receive the honour. Three years earlier the USGA had presented him with the Bob Jones Award, its highest honour for sportsmanship, and he also received the Old Tom Morris Award in 1989. He was later inducted into the World Humanitarian Sports Hall of Fame in 1994.
His generosity was well documented. He pledged prize money to Mother Teresa during the 1981 U.S. Open, and in 1979 he founded the Chi Chi Rodríguez Youth Foundation in Clearwater. The foundation uses a public golf course to offer at-risk young people instruction, mentoring, life skills and job opportunities, and in 2004 it expanded to include the Clearwater chapter of The First Tee. At the time of his death, the PGA Tour noted that it served around 600 children each year.
His imprint on Puerto Rican and Caribbean golf
Rodríguez’s connection to home never faded. In March 2012, at 76, he played 18 holes as an honorary participant at the Puerto Rico Open, a round described as his final official appearance as a PGA Tour professional.
His legacy has echoed through the players who followed. When Rafael Campos won the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in November 2024, just three months after Rodríguez’s passing, the victory was widely framed as a moment for Puerto Rican golf, and a reminder of the path Rodríguez had opened decades earlier.
Chi Chi Rodríguez once summed up his outlook simply: be different, and be yourself. He was both, and golf in Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean is richer for it.