After all these years, it's still embarrassing for me to play on the American golf tour. Like the time I asked my caddie for a sand wedge and he came back ten minutes later with a ham on rye.

Rodríguez’s joke plays on the double meaning of “sand wedge,” a golf club, versus a “sandwich,” a food order. Framed as self-deprecating embarrassment about playing on the American tour, it also nods to the cultural and linguistic adjustments faced by an immigrant athlete from Puerto Rico navigating U.S. professional golf. The humor depends on a moment of miscommunication between player and caddie, turning a technical request into an everyday deli item (“ham on rye”). Beyond the pun, the line reinforces Rodríguez’s public persona as a charismatic entertainer who used comedy to disarm audiences and to comment lightly on outsider status in a predominantly American milieu.