Golf from coast to coast
PGA Tour in California, LPGA in Florida
As he began to play as a regular on the PGA Tour late last year, Jose de Jesus Rodriguez was often asked if he was nervous stepping onto the course. After all, this was golf ’s most grandiose stage, with the biggest stars, and even at 37, Rodriguez was a newcomer to the game.
Then he would tell a little about his background and how he got here; about the days in central Mexico that he went without food, the dirt floor he slept on in the one-room adobe hut before crossing the neck-deep Rio Grande into the United States at 15, when he couldn’t swim.
Sometimes, he’d share how, after a decade of laboring tirelessly in the USA, he returned to Mexico and only then began playing golf competitively. But the game came relatively easy, in large part, because of what he’d already overcome.
No, he’d say, he wasn’t nervous to swing a club, even on the PGA Tour.
“If I wasn’t afraid to go through the treacherous trials to get here,” he said through an interpreter, “through the river, through whatever I had to endure to get to this point, it’s not going to be any more nerve-racking now.”
In the California desert this week, Rodriguez will enter his seventh Tour event of the season at the Desert Classic at PGA West and La Quinta Country Club. He is coming off a 57th-place finish in the Sony Open in Hawaii and has made the cut four times.
Considering that he didn’t play a full round of golf between the ages of 15 to 25 while he lived in the USA and he’s from a town with one 18-hole golf course, Rodriguez is perhaps one of the most unlikely success stories in the game.
“To be honest, I feel so happy just because it’s been like a dream come true,” he said.
The dream didn’t begin with aspirations of playing on the Tour, like most everyone else playing at the Desert Classic. No, Rodriguez had a simpler idea of what he wanted for himself, his seven siblings and his parents.
The second-oldest, he placed the burden on himself to help the family out of poverty. Picking corn in the fields of Irapuato provided a meager return.
He had heard that if he could get to the U.S., there was plenty of money to be made.
So he bused and hitchhiked nearly 600 miles north to Nuevo Laredo, situated on Mexico’s northeastern border. He plunged into the river and found his way into the United States unscathed after dozens of previous attempts led him into the custody of border patrol agents.
Rodriguez found his way to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and worked as a groundskeeper at Stonebridge Meadows Golf Club. It was 1996, and Rodri- guez was barely a teenager. He worked six and sometimes seven days a week, often from dawn until dusk, learning the course and developing a love for the game, by meticulously caring for every inch of the course.
He worked there for years while sleeping on the floor of an apartment rented by co-workers. He’d wire a few hundred dollars home to his parents each paycheck.
After a decade away from home, he returned to Mexico at 25. He began to caddie at the local course and carried the bag of Alfonso Vallejo Esquivel, a wealthy local who worked in the pharmaceutical industry. Esquivel was impressed with Rodriguez’s understanding of the course and the game that he purchased a club membership for him and asked him to play alongside him and offer pointers. Rodriguez obliged.
“He’s a tenacious competitor,” tour pro Scott Langley said. “The thing I probably like most about his game is his driving. He’s got a really fluid-looking golf swing.”
He played a handful of PGA Tour events over the years through invites and exemptions before becoming a regular last year, starting with the Safeway Open in Napa, California, in October.
“He’s got a really solid game,” Canadian pro David Hearn said. “You can tell that he’s a more veteran player for somebody who’s a rookie out here. You can tell that he kind of plays a little bit scrappy, it’s a bit homemade, but his short game and the way he gets the ball in the hole is fantastic.
“Maybe that’s a little bit of the road that he’s had to the PGA Tour.”
Rodriguez understands he’s playing for more than just himself. He hears often from others who say he’s inspired them with his ability to go from nothing to the highest level of professional golf.
“I’m an example so that people can see that you really can set your goals and really aspire to be something and reach those goals,” he said. “It just gives me more of a reason to keep pushing harder and to be better every day.”
“If I wasn’t afraid to go through the treacherous trials to get here, through the river, through whatever I had to endure to get to this point, it’s not going to be any more nerve-racking now.” Jose de Jesus Rodriguez PGA Tour rookie at 37