Most golfers who qualify for The Masters spend the night before their first round visualizing fairways, rehearsing their pre-shot routine, maybe eating a quiet dinner. Chi Chi Rodriguez drank an entire bottle of rum.
It was 1961. Rodriguez, a 25-year-old Puerto Rican who had turned pro just the year before, had earned his way into the most prestigious tournament in golf. The invitation came after Augusta chairman Clifford Roberts declared him “The Champion of Puerto Rico.” For a kid who grew up swinging guava tree branches at crushed tin cans in Rio Piedras, walking through the gates of Augusta National should have been a dream fulfilled.
Instead, it was a nightmare of nerves.
Rodriguez later admitted exactly what happened in what’s become one of the most quoted lines in Masters history: he was so anxious that he polished off a bottle of rum before stepping to the first tee. He shot 83 that day, eleven over par, and later called it “the happiest 83” of his life.
He missed the cut. Obviously.
Who Was Chi Chi Rodriguez?
If you only know Chi Chi from that rum story, you’re missing the full picture.
Juan Antonio Rodriguez was born in 1935 into poverty in Puerto Rico. His father worked the sugar cane fields, and Chi Chi was out there alongside him by age seven. He started caddying at eight, teaching himself to play with whatever he could find. By twelve, he’d shot a 67. By seventeen, he’d finished second in the Puerto Rico Open.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1954 and serving two years, Rodriguez came home and landed a job as caddie master at the Dorado Beach Resort. That’s where pro golfer Pete Cooper helped refine his game, and resort co-owner Laurance Rockefeller put up the $12,000 that got him onto the PGA Tour in 1960.
Standing 5’7″ and barely tipping 125 pounds, Rodriguez looked like nobody’s idea of a long hitter. But he had a roundhouse swing that generated distance matching the biggest bombers on Tour, including Jack Nicklaus. He won eight PGA Tour events between 1963 and 1979, highlighted by a one-stroke victory over Arnold Palmer at the 1964 Western Open.
The Showman Augusta Wasn’t Ready For
Chi Chi didn’t just play golf. He performed it.
After sinking a birdie putt, he’d drop his straw Panama hat over the hole “so the birdie doesn’t fly away.” When some players (Palmer among them) told him to dial it back at the 1964 Masters, Rodriguez adapted. He swapped the hat trick for his now-legendary “toreador dance,” wielding his putter like a sword and pantomiming a bullfight, pretending the ball was the bull.
Fans loved it. Some fellow pros didn’t. Rodriguez took the criticism hard. He once said the backlash made him want to hide in his room and do nothing but sleep and go home.
But he kept showing up. Rodriguez played Augusta 14 times total, with his best finishes coming as tied-for-tenth in both 1970 and 1973. He never contended seriously for a green jacket, but that was never really the point.
Where Chi Chi Really Dominated
The Senior PGA Tour (now the Champions Tour) is where Rodriguez’s career truly caught fire. He won three times in his rookie season of 1986, then had a monster 1987 with seven victories, including the Senior PGA Championship. He set records that still stand: four consecutive victories and eight consecutive birdies (the latter coming at the 1987 Silver Pages Classic). He racked up 22 Champions Tour wins total, good for seventh all-time.
In 1991, he lost a playoff to Nicklaus at the U.S. Senior Open. Losing to Nicklaus wasn’t exactly a mark of shame.
He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992, the first Puerto Rican to earn that honor.
More Than a Golfer
What set Rodriguez apart from most Hall of Famers wasn’t just the trophies or the one-liners. It was what he did with his platform.
In 1979, he founded the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation in Clearwater, Florida, nearly two decades before The First Tee existed. The program brought at-risk kids to a local public course for golf instruction, part-time work, and life skills training. It later expanded into the Chi Chi Rodriguez Academy for students who were struggling academically or dealing with difficult personal circumstances. He once said that a man never stands taller than when he bends down to help a child.
He also bought his mother a house and financially supported his siblings back in Puerto Rico.
Rodriguez passed away on August 8, 2024, at age 88. The tributes poured in from the PGA Tour, the USGA, and the broader golf world, all noting that his generosity off the course mattered at least as much as anything he did on it.
The Lesson for Your Game
Here’s what the rum story actually teaches us, beyond being a great bar anecdote: even elite professionals get rattled by the moment. Rodriguez was a supremely talented ball-striker who could outdrive players twice his size. None of that mattered when his nerves hijacked his body at Augusta.
The difference between Rodriguez and most golfers who choke under pressure? He came back. Thirteen more times. He figured out how to manage the anxiety (without the rum), developed routines that let his personality work for him instead of against him, and built a career that spanned three decades of competitive wins.
If you’re struggling with first-tee jitters at your Saturday Nassau, just remember: a future Hall of Famer once needed a bottle of Bacardi to walk onto the first tee at Augusta. You’re in good company.