Chi Chi's Children
Life Magazine
November 1997
Anyone who knows golf knows Chi Chi Rodriguez, the skinny guy in the white Panama hat who has been one of the stars on the Senior PGA Tour for the last three years, with more than $1.2 million in earnings. Galleries love him. He has an endless supply of jokes, poses happily for the camera and is obliging with autographs. Whenever he sinks a long putt, he breaks into his favorite routine. His putter becomes on sword; he duels and dispatches an imaginary foe, then jams the blade into its scabbard -a genuine crowd pleaser.
But there is more to Chi Chi than showmanship, much more. To a growing number of children in the Clearwater, Fla., area, the 53-year-old golfer who grew up in poverty in Puerto Rico is "Uncle Chi Chi." He is the driving force behind the Chi Chi Rodriguez Youth Foundation, which is dedicated to helping troubled youngsters, ages five to 15, straighten out their lives Those in the program may have been abused, involved in drugs, had brushes with the law.
Headquarters is a municipal golf club, where the kids are bused after school to be tutored, to get vocational training and play a little golf. Children on suspension from school spend all day there, getting counseling, learning to landscape a course, fix golf carts or work in the pro shop. A recent Pinellas County study showed that children in the program had improved their classroom attendance, conduct and self-esteem. Their grades rose, drug use plummeted and scrapes with the law virtually disappeared.
All of this began 10 years ago, when juvenile prison guard Bill Hayes took a couple of inmates to see Rodriguez play. Chi Chi, ever the soft touch, let the youngsters walk with him for a few holes, then went with them to the detention center for dinner. "Seeing those kids trapped like animals inside cells broke my heart," Rodriguez says. "I wasn't that different once, except I never got caught. So I said to Hayes, 'Let's do something.'"
The men decided that exposure to golf and the life that goes with it would be good therapy. They persuaded Clearwater officials to lease Glen Oaks Golf Course, which was costing the city money, for $1 a year. Hayes, who soon left the prison to become a teacher at Clearwater Comprehensive School, took the most troubled kids to the golf course, dressed them like golfers in donated clothes, got them haircuts, listened to their problems and, with a staff that has grown to 30, began to convince them that they could be successful.
There was initial resistance from local officials, but now Clearwater Mayor Rita Garvey calls it, "the wave of the future in education." The foundation also offers golf lessons to retarded citizens and is launching an alternative school (grades six, seven, eight) on 220 acres outside the city, which will include a nature trail, golf course and vocational program. The curriculum will be for children who are so maladjusted they are considered a risk by school and social service authorities.
Although Hayes is the day-to-day administrator, the heart and soul of the foundation is Chi Chi, who in 1986 received the Horatio Alger award for humanitarianism, and honor that has gone to such people as Chuck Yeager, Clare Boothe Luce and Bob Hope. In addition to giving the kids pointers on the art of the swing, he works hard to support the foundation's ambitious programs. Last year he raised $803,000 at the annual Chi Chi and the Bear Kid Classic, joined by the Bear himself, Jack Nicklaus. Rodriguez spends as much time at Glen Oaks as his schedule permits. To the children he is a welcome authority figure, a man not stingy with hugs. "It's heaven," he says of his foundation. "The smiles on the kids' faces are worth more to me than winning a golf tournament."
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