Rodriguez Recalls Good Days of Caddying

Chi Chi Rodriguez figures that he is one of the last of a kind--a professional golfer who made it up through the caddie ranks.

Rodriguez, Lee Trevino and Mike Hill are among the few left on the Senior PGA Tour who were poor as youngsters and had a chance to learn the sport because they were caddies.

Rodriguez fears that poor youngsters are being priced out of the sport he loves.

“Lee and Mike and myself are about the last ones,” he said recently. “There are very few courses that still use caddies. The golf cart has taken over. Most of the golfers are developed in youth programs and in high school and college. The poor youngster is out.”

Rodriguez, a popular player who has put some laughs into pro golf, has a possible solution. His golf school for abused boys in Florida is developing golfers. He started it more than 25 years ago with $2,000. He already has had one player who went to the PGA qualifying school, and hopes to have more soon. He also has 18 players who have completed college.

Rodriguez stopped in the Southland on his way to Kona, Hawaii, for the $450,000 Senior Skins Game today and Sunday at the Mauni Lani Resort. If he wins any money there, most of it will be used for needy students at his school.

He will be competing against Trevino, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. He failed to win a skin last January, but in the first two years of the event, he was the top winner with a total of $420,000.

“This is a fun event,” Rodriguez said. “We always have a lot of laughs, and the television audience really enjoys it. I’m just honored to be playing with these great golfers.”

His next appearance in Southern California will be March 4-8, when he will defend his title in the GTE West at Ojai Valley Inn and Country Club. With 20 victories on the 50-and-older tour, Rodriguez trails only Don January, who has 22, and Miller Barber, the leader with 24.

“I love playing at Ojai,” Rodriguez said. “It’s great for the pros. You come here and you don’t have to leave. You eat, sleep and play golf right there. It’s probably my favorite tournament.”

Rodriguez, 5 feet 7 and 135 pounds, is invariably asked two questions wherever he goes.

One is how he started out.

“I was so small, I started out as a tee marker,” he answers with a laugh. Then he explains that he started out as a caddie.

“You didn’t dare lose a ball for the man whose bag you were toting,” he says. “If you did, though, they kicked your butt off the course. It was tempting, though. It was in the Depression and you could get 75 cents for any good ball you found. That was enough to feed our family.”

The other question is how he learned to play so fast.

“They would close the course about 45 minutes before sundown,” Rodriguez says. “We would sneak on the course and hit as many shots as we had time before it became too dark.

“There was another reason. The greenskeeper had a gun. He had real bullets in it. So, if you didn’t hurry, you didn’t survive.”

At 56, Rodriguez is not sure how many more years he can compete. He finished fourth on the senior earnings list and says he has a shot at being No. 1 this year.

“I lost my chance to win last year because I put too much pressure on myself,” he said. “This year, I’m just going out to have fun. The way I’m swinging the club, I can win it if I just improve my putting.

“When I first came on the regular tour, I was a good putter. I just stepped up and knocked the ball into the hole.

“A golf magazine asked me to write an article on putting, and that ruined me. When I sat down and analyzed my putting, I ruined my own putting. I was paid $50 and it cost me $500,000.”

In the first event this year, the Tournament of Champions at La Costa, Rodriguez used an old putter he had found in a closet at home in Puerto Rico. It was one he had used with great success before writing the article on putting. For three rounds at La Costa, he putted well, but during the last round, he missed several easy putts and failed to win the tournament.

Now, he said, he is considering a long-handled putter. Sooner or later, nearly every senior on the tour tries the pendulum style of putting. Although Rodriguez probably won’t use it during the Senior Skins Game, he might try it on the tour.

“I always thought it didn’t look professional,” he said. “But how far can you go looking good, missing?”