Rose Parade Scores an Ace, Gets a Truly Grand Marshal

Two admirals have been grand marshals of the Rose Parade. There have been four generals.

Well, we have a military man this year who climbed clear up to private. In the army.

There have been four men who became President.

Well, our 1995 marshal never got in office. But he voted.

There have been three comedians--Harold Lloyd, Bob Hope and Danny Kaye.

None of them were any funnier than our 1995 guy is after he has sunk a long putt.

There have been countless show-biz types. Mary Pickford, America’s sweetheart, was a grand marshal. So was Shirley Temple, America’s moppet. John Wayne, America’s American, rode at the head too. Gregory Peck.

A ventriloquist’s dummy, Charlie McCarthy, made it. As did his ventriloquist, Edgar Bergen.

All kinds of athletic heroes made it. Babe Ruth never did but Henry Aaron did. Merlin Olsen presided. So did Pele.

Frank Sinatra made it. Bing Crosby, no.

Only one golfer had made it before this year: Arnold Palmer. He won 62 tournaments, including a U.S. Open, two British Opens and four Masters. Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Bobby Jones never made it.

But our 1995 Rose Parade grand marshal is--a little trumpet fanfare, professor!--Juan (Chi Chi) Rodriguez!

You know something? They couldn’t have made a better choice. Mother Teresa, perhaps. She’s Rodriguez’s idol.

Rodriguez is the first Puerto Rican to be selected grand marshal. And he’s the smallest person since Shirley Temple.

It’s not that Cheech was such a towering figure on the PGA Tour. True, he won eight tournaments, 73 fewer than Snead and 65 fewer than Jack Nicklaus. None of his eight victories was a major. Nicklaus won more majors than Rodriguez had victories.

But Rodriguez didn’t roll out of bed with this gorgeous golf swing. He wasn’t raised on a golf course. Chi Chi learned to play golf with--get this--a ball made out of a tin can. He tapped it up and down a baseball diamond with a club made out of a guava limb.

Rodriguez is the first person to make grand marshal who started out life chopping sugar cane or driving the oxen to plow it.

“I started work when I was 7 years old,” he says. “In the morning I would sell peanuts that my sister had roasted. Then I would go over to the golf club and caddie for 25 cents for 18 holes. And that was if you were a good caddie. Today, a caddie gets $150 a round and after you hit it, he says, ‘Where did that go? Anybody see it?’ ”

Behind every successful kid there is a caring adult, Chi Chi points out. In his case, it was the influential Ed Dudley, PGA president and pro at Puerto Rico’s Rockefeller resort, Dorado Beach.

“Mr. Dudley came to my house one day, looked around, and said, ‘You can’t live in this,’ and got me the down payment on a new house. Then, he said, ‘You can’t get anywhere walking,’ and helped me get a car. I was just out of the Army and he gave me a job at $300 a month.”

It wasn’t long before Rodriguez was not only cleaning the members’ clubs, he was cleaning their clocks with a self-taught swing that looked like nothing so much as a guy beating a carpet. As for Rodriguez, he couldn’t believe his good luck at being able to play with a ball that was not made out of a tomato can and didn’t say Heinz on it but Titleist.

Everybody liked Chi Chi and, more important, Laurance Rockefeller liked his work ethic so much that he bankrolled him on the pro tour.

Rodriguez was always a people person, a soft touch for the panhandlers, a show for the galleries. He was so small--5 feet 6, 118 pounds--that he tended to disappear when he went into the rough. They tell the story of his caddie beating around in the high grass one day and a PGA official asking, “Lost ball?” And the caddie answering, “Lost golfer. Do we get a free drop if I find Chi Chi?”

Rodriguez played to the gallery. When he dropped a long putt, he would hurry after it and drop his Panama hat over the hole to keep the ball from bouncing out. When some pros complained--”The great ones never did, it was always the guys who missed the cut,” Rodriguez says--Rodriguez cheerfully dropped the routine and substituted instead the pose of a swordsman or a successful bullfighter, slashing his putter at the air and sheathing it dramatically into his belt, a St. George who slew the dragon, bogey.

Rodriguez has come a long way from cane cutter and peanut vendor. He made $1,037,105 on the regular tour with the eight victories and a gross of seconds, and he has made $4,539,124 on the senior tour with 22 victories.

He’s an important part of the cast of characters at the Ralphs Senior Classic at Rancho Park this weekend. He’s one of golf’s golden guardians now, a superstar, not a supporting player, and a major contributor to youth golf, a low bow of appreciation to the days when he himself needed that push.

It set a few of us to remembering another time at Rancho, 32 years ago. It was 1962 at the L.A. Open and Nicklaus was making his first appearance as a touring pro. After the first round, a few of us were standing around in the gathering evening gloom when this strange apparition leaned over and intruded itself into the conversation.

“I can hit the ball as far as Nicklaus, “ it was saying.

We looked at him. He was as skinny as a one-iron, as small as a ball washer, had a thick Latino accent and wore these thick eyeglasses. We were not sure his shoes matched.

“Oh, sure you can, kid” we said. “Who do you caddie for?”

“I’m not a caddie, I’m a pro,” he told us.

“Who was that? “we asked after he left for his car. Someone looked it up. “Juan Rodriguez. Puerto Rico,” he said, consulting the program. “The next Jack Nicklaus!”

We all had a good laugh.

“Never heard of him.” someone said.

“And you never will,” someone else predicted.

I often wonder what would have happened if that little character had turned around and added, “Not only that, but 30 years from now I’ll be coming back here as grand marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade. Then there’ll be me and Eisenhower and Gen. Bradley and Bob Hope and Adm. Halsey and Walt Disney and John Wayne and Roy Rogers and Jimmy Stewart and all the greats on the wall!”