Chi Chi Rodriguez, the Golf World’s Swashbuckling Champion, Dies at 88

Chi Chi Rodriguez, whose flamboyance on the course and passion for the game of golf transformed him into one of its most popular players through his more than three decades on the pro tours, has died. He was 88.

His death was announced by Carmelo Javier Ríos Santiago, a member of the Puerto Rican Senate, and the PGA Tour. No cause of death or other details were given.

In a sport played out at lush country clubs where respectful crowds idolize often bland players with comfortable roots, Rodriguez broke the mold.

Growing up in a poor family in Puerto Rico, he almost died at age 4 from vitamin deficiencies. At age 7, he helped out in the sugar cane fields where his father, Juan Sr., whacked away with a machete for a few dollars a day.

The boy who would be known as Chi Chi also began caddying at a course that drew affluent tourists. He taught himself to play using limbs from guava trees to propel crushed tin cans into holes he had dug on baseball fields, and at age 12 he shot a 67 in a real game of golf. After playing in Puerto Rican tournaments, he joined the PGA Tour in 1960.

Rodriguez was 5 feet 7 and 120 pounds or so. But he used his strong hands and wrists to get off long low drives, and he was an outstanding wedge player, offsetting his sometimes balky putting game. “For a little man, he sure can hit it,” Jack Nicklaus told Sports Illustrated in 1964, relating how Rodriguez often out-distanced him off the tee on flat, into-the-wind fairways.