Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez

  b. 1935 | Puerto Rican golfer

At The Bottom

— 1942

Juan Rodriguez and his family had gone without food more times than they could have counted.

One of six children living in  horrific poverty in Rio Pierdras, Puerto Rico, Juan Rodriguez and his family had gone without food more times than they could have counted.  Young “Chi Chi” himself suffered from rickets and tropical sprue, brought on by vitamin deficiencies that would leave several of his fingers permanently crooked.  By the time he was seven years old, he had joined his father in the cane fields, where he carried water to other workers for a dollar a day.  At a time when the Puerto Rican economy had not yet emerged from the global depression of the 1930s, there was no reason for Rodriguez to imagine that his future would be much different from his father’s.