SHAWNEE ON DELAWARE, Pa. _ Joey Hines' journey concluded on a rise above the Delaware River where, like some spiritual pilgrim at a mountaintop moment of awakening, he paused to contemplate the completion of a nearly 30-year journey.
After two-putting from 18 feet for par at the Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort's 230-yard, par-3 18th hole, the North Carolina club professional looked up at the blue skies that had pushed aside the last afternoon clouds, then toward a verdant Pocono hillside, and finally down at the river that bisects this historic course about 100 miles north of Philadelphia.
At that moment, Shawnee, where Paul Runyan won his second PGA Championship in 1938 by defeating Sam Snead in the match-play final, had added another distinction. The first design of famed golf architect A.W. Tillinghast, it was now also the endpoint in a daunting project that consumed nearly half of Hines's 60 years.
When he lifted his ball from that hole Friday afternoon, in view of the family members who golfed along with him and the old white clubhouse where Arnold Palmer met his first wife in 1954, Hines had played all 118 courses to have hosted the sport's four majors.
"It was a dream I never planned on having," he said afterward. "And I finished it on a perfect blue-sky day, surrounded by family. It doesn't get better than that."
Geographically, his golfing odyssey stretched from Pebble Beach in California to Carnoustie in Scotland. Chronologically, it began in 1990 at Northwood in Dallas (site of the 1952 U.S. Open) and finished on Friday, at Shawnee. Hines' scores over the 29 years ranged from a 66 at Northwood to an 87 at Hazeltine and included impressive 70s at Pinehurst No. 2 and Medinah.
"Sooner or later, my body's not going to let me do this," he said.
Shawnee marked the first time Hines had been joined by his entire family: his wife, two daughters and son-in-law. That wasn't because the round had added significance, but rather because Father's Day was approaching and his older daughter, Annie, lives in New York City.
Along the way, he'd played with course-maintenance workers, club pros, and members from his home course at Cape Fear, N.C. He had to overcome hurricanes, club restrictions, countless travel snafus and, just last year, throat cancer.
"The cancer kind of scared me to the point that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to finish this quest," said Hines. "I'd set up a trip a year in advance to go to Scotland. Then I got a call from my doctor telling me I had throat cancer. You hear those words, and everything else becomes secondary."
Though doctors advised against it, Hines insisted on making the overseas excursion. When treatments made him so weak he couldn't hit a golf ball for four months, he arranged for carts at the Scottish courses.
"But I got there, the adrenaline took over," he said. "I played 8 { courses _ one was just nine holes _ and walked all of them, made it through. I collapsed afterward, but there was something about it that got me through.
"Now I'm feeling great. My throat is clear. My doctor told me, 'Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want to see you for six months.' And I said, 'Don't take this the wrong way, Doc, but I don't even want to see you then.' "
