Hall of Fame golfer Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez died Thursday at age 88.
Rodriguez's death was announced by Carmelo Javier Rios, a senator from Puerto Rico, his native country. No cause of death was given.
No one from Puerto Rico had ever made it to the PGA Tour, and Rodriguez was determined not only to get there, but to beat the best.
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Juan Antonio “Chi-Chi” Rodriguez of Puerto Rico competed in the 1990 Transamerica Senior Golf Championship of the Senior PGA Tour on October 21, 1990, at Silverado Country Club in Napa, California. (David Madison/Getty Images)
“I was told I was a bloodhound who dreamed of pork chops,” he once told Sports Illustrated.
Rodriguez learned to play golf by hitting cans with a guava stick and found work as a caddy. According to a biography provided by Chi Chi Rodriguez Management Group, he claimed he could shoot 67 at age 12.
Before joining the PGA Tour in 1960, he served in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957. Rodriguez won eight times during his 21-year career and played on a Ryder Cup team.
After his PGA career, he played on the Champions Tour from 1985 to 2002 and won 22 times on that circuit. His combined career earnings totaled more than $7.6 million.
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Juan Chi Chi Rodriguez (R) and his wife Iwalani attend the Marc Anthony concert at Jose M. Agrelot Coliseum on September 11, 2015 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (GV Cruz/WireImage)
He was best known for his antics, which included twirling his golf club like a sword or doing a celebratory dance, often with a slurred salsa step after making a birdie putt.
He was inducted into the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.
“Chi Chi Rodriguez's passion for charity and social assistance was only surpassed by his incredible talent with a golf club in hand,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “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 during this difficult time.”
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Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez performs his patented dance after holing a putt at the US Senior Open in 1996. (Bob Stowell/Getty Images)
Rodriguez started a children's academy in the Tampa area, with the goal of helping at-risk children. As he grew older, he devoted much of his time to community and charitable activities, such as the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation.
He had a near-death experience just over 25 years ago, when he was hospitalised in October 1998 after suffering chest pains. He reluctantly agreed to see a doctor, who told him he was having a heart attack.
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Golfer Juan Chi Chi Rodriguez swings and watches the flight of his ball during a tournament circa 1988. (Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
“I got scared for the first time,” Rodriguez recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 1999. “Jim Anderson (his pilot) took me to the hospital and there was a team of doctors waiting to operate on me. If I had waited another 10 minutes, the doctor said I would have needed a heart transplant.
“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.”
In recent years, he spent much of his time in Puerto Rico, where he was a partner in a community golf project that struggled amid the recession and housing crisis, and hosted a talk show on a local radio station for several years.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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