This article is a direct reprint of an article first published in 1998 and written by then Senior Editor Minority Golf Magazine, Dana Butler.
When asked for his thoughts on the occasion of a very early tee time, Chi Chi Rodriguez says “I love it. I like everything. And I love everybody.”
Chi Chi Rodriguez Has Learned the Secret of Eternal Youth: “Life Is Fun”
The poverty of his youth always fed the hunger in his drive to succeed on the professional golf circuit. He’s instantly recognizable with his Panama hat and his swashbuckling mannerisms. He’s one of the greats, one we call by his first name, like Jack or Arnie. He’s Chi Chi; even the leader boards often don’t bother with his surname. He’s been doing this golf thing for a long time, 56 years or so, and if there’s one lesson he’s learned about golf and life, it’s to enjoy every minute.
His shots are not as accurate or as long as they once were, but he still finds joy in the game and joy in life. He still gets chills and stares in awe as the sun rises or sets, whether he is in his native Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, at home in Florida, or somewhere else playing in a Senior PGA event. When asked how he sees himself as a golfer or entertainer, Rodriguez responds, “I see myself as a kid’s friend.” He is concerned more about children lacking heroes than he is with regaining the form that led him to eight victories on the PGA Tour and 22 wins since joining the Seniors in 1985 (the most recent in 1993).
Rodriguez needs only to look in a mirror to find someone giving back to golf and to children, a real hero for today. His longtime manager, the late Eddie Elias, once said, “Chi Chi’s biggest physical deficiency is that his heart’s too big for his body. He gives everything away–money, clothes, his time. He says doing anything else would be betraying his mission on earth.”
The values of his parents are deeply ingrained. The elder Rodriguez fought for the integrity of his family and would give away his day’s only meal to a hungry child, even if it wasn’t one of his five. He also taught his son to have pride and never to be intimidated, a lesson Rodriguez took to the links when he began to play against golfers with the skills of Palmer and Nicklaus. Chi Chi often told his parents he wanted to be the first Puerto Rican billionaire so he could leave all his money to the poor children still scratching out an existence on the Caribbean island. Tour success and large purses have not and could not make him forget the place, mentally and physically, that he came from.
As a child, Juan Rodriguez brought water to the workers in the sugarcane fields of Puerto Rico for a few cents a day. Before turning seven, he was guiding a plow behind a sweaty ox and digging ditches for a dollar a day, money his family badly needed.
Golf rescued him at age seven. He began to caddy, earning 10 cents for 18 holes and soon making more than twice that. He played using clubs constructed from tree limbs and a crushed tin cup for a ball. He was so small and skinny that he sometimes jokes that he began his golfing life as “a ball marker.” In retrospect, he makes light of the situation because time has passed and because it is his nature not to wallow in misery, but he admits, “I’ve never been a kid.” That may be why he connects so well with today’s children, who are his fans and students.
Those early days shaped some of the course habits he has retained throughout his career. For example, he plays from a tee two and a half inches high. While he has offered many explanations for the unusual height–he even stopped doing it for a while because he was asked “100 questions a day” about it–he says the truth comes from his youth. “I didn’t have wooden tees. There was a bucket of water and a pile of sand next to the tee. You’d make a mound and hit your ball.” Rodriguez and some of the other caddies found it easier to carry a piece of dried horse manure, place it on the ground, and hit each drive from there. Aside from getting him used to hitting off a high tee, the manure had another effect. “I always swing through the ball with my shoulders while my head comes up quickly. I found out early that if you kept your head down and caught one fat, it was time to wash your face.”
The validity of that explanation could probably be questioned, considering his love of storytelling, but why bother? Rodriguez’s appeal comes from his showmanship, style, and ability to tell a fascinating story, true or not. A conversation with him could go in any direction and often does. He can speak at length about baseball, boxing, the economy, and the death penalty. Clinics and classes are peppered with philosophy, comedy, politics, and sometimes a little prophecy. “Golf is show business,” says Rodriguez, a phenomenon he attributes to increased television coverage. “I always feel like I’m onstage when I’m out there,” this statement is punctuated by his trademark swordplay with a putter.
The oration appeals to young and old alike, and the lessons are always applicable. “If you work very hard, they call you lucky. When they call you lucky, you know you’re good.
“When you fail at something, try again. You don’t learn anything in life by winning all the time.
“Great players win with their minds. They see nothing but positives out there.”
He will spend hours posing for pictures and signing autographs for young fans. When asked if the adoration makes him tired, he says only that the energy of the kids is transferred to him.
He always wears green–“the color of money”–on Sundays, and he never puts his hat on the bed in a hotel room. A trademark trick is to put that hat over the hole to keep the ball from jumping back out and then to sheath his putter like a swordsman after slaying a dragon.
With Rodriguez, the superstition complements rather than contradicts his deeply spiritual nature. He calls his bent fingers–the result of a bout with rickets as a child–“a blessing from God because, if you look closely, they form a perfect golf grip.” Conversations with? God are a regular occurrence, and he is grateful for the constant presence of his guardian angel.
Neither does he shy away from using science to bolster his health and psyche. At one point, he considered giving up the game that lifted him from the dirt streets of his youth and made him rich. However, on New Year’s Day 1995, after serving as grand marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Los Angeles, he took his private jet to the Black Forest near Munich, Germany, to a clinic where doctors had some success with injections of lamb hormones to stall–and, in some reported cases, halt and reverse–the aging process. In early 1996, his 36th year on the professional Tour, he said, “I feel so good it’s scary.”
With a healthy mix of experimental biology and old-fashioned faith, Rodriguez is in no danger of slowing down. At 62, he vows to live to be 120. He has raised over $4 million for the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation (see related story, page xx). He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame[1]in 1992 and the World Humanitarian Sports Hall of Fame in 1994. He began the 1998 season in the top 31 on the all-time PGA money list and does about 60 charity outings per year. He goes to sleep each night with “peace of mind and love in my heart.”
Small things can make a difference in a life; for example, he didn’t own a toothbrush until he was a teenager. You can be sure he takes nothing for granted now. He says, “The fans don’t owe me a thing. I owe them.” This refreshing attitude is a rarity among the [1]ranks of professional athletes.
Rodriguez’s soul is buoyed by the memory of his childhood. He smiles in the face of adversity because people pay him to do what he loves. He’s seen how tough life can be, so a cloudy sky or a bogeyed hole is hardly a cause for sadness or depression in this man’s eyes. “Life is beautiful. You have to enjoy it,” he says, a well-learned lesson.
