Cape Fear CC’s Golf Pro Featured for Playing All U.S. Open Courses

It took Joey Hines 30 years to play 49 courses in 17 states, and become what is believed to be the only golfer to have completed the unique circuit. Now he seeks to play all courses that have hosted a major.

In its July 2 edition, The Philadelphia Inquirer featured Joey Hines, the golf professional at Cape Fear Country Club in Wilmington, N.C., for his unique feat of playing every course to have hosted U.S. Open. The Inquirer interviewed Hines at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa.—which he ticked off his list along with two others in the Philadelphia area—in the week prior to Merion hosting the 113^th Open from June 13-16.

The 54-year-old Hines, who is believed to be the only golfer to have completed the unique circuit, ended his 30-year quest by playing Worcester (Mass.) Country Club two years ago, the Inquirer reported. All told, his odyssey took him to 49 courses in 17 states and included rounds played in mud, sleet and snow.

Along the way, the Inquirer reported, Hines discovered that some of the U.S. Open layouts “had been forgotten or rendered irrelevant,” and that one Open venue had vanished while another had been abandoned and had its name affixed to an adjacent 18-year-old track. He also learned that some of America’s best-known courses, including  Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club, Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., and Merion, fully earned their reputations.

“Merion is one of my favorites,” Hines told the Inquirer. “Every architect should have to go play there before they’re allowed to build a course. It’s just got everything you need.”

Hines unknowingly began his quest in 1981, the Inquirer reported, when he graduated from East Carolina University, where he had captained the golf team, and took a job at Northwood Club in Dallas, which hosted the 1952 U.S. Open.

After playing Northwood, Hines told the Inquirer, “I got an immediate sense that there was a very different flavor between your normal golf courses and your U.S. Open courses.”

Hines later went on a golf excursion to the Northeast U.S. with some Northwood members, where the group played Merion and Aronimink Golf Club in the Philadelphia area, along with the National Golf Links of America and Shinnecock Hills GC on Long Island in Southhampton, N.Y, and Baltusrol GC in Springfield, N.J.

“So you play those five and it’s like, ‘How does it get any better than this?’ ” Hines told the Inquirer. That trip was so successful, the group then made a swing through Ohio and Western Pennsylvania to play Canterbury GC in Cleveland, Inverness GC in Toledo, Firestone CC in Akron, and Oakmont.

“At that point, we were still going more for the big-name courses,” Hines told the Inquirer. “But after three or four of those trips, a friend said, ‘You know, you’ve played an awful lot of U.S. Open courses.’ That interested me and I started researching. I found out there were 49 of them —actually 50, but Englewood in New Jersey had closed. So I started nibbling away.”

(Englewood (N.J.) Golf Club, where the 1909 Open took place, is the only U.S. Open site to have disappeared, replaced in the 1960s by a ramp to the George Washington Bridge, the Inquirer explained. And while The Country Club of Buffalo’s name still exists, it was noted, it’s not the course where Philadelphian Johnny McDermott won a second consecutive Open in 1912—that is now a 5,700-yard municipal track called the Grover Cleveland Golf Course.)

Once Hines gave up his dream of playing on the PGA Tour, the pace of his quest quickened, the Inquirer reported. Courses that he listed as “pleasant surprises” included Philadelphia Country Club, the Myopia Hunt Club near Boston, and three Chicago-area courses, Chicago Golf Club, the Onwentsia Club and the Glen View Club.

“Chicago Golf Club is like Merion,” Hines said. “If somebody gave you a million dollars and told you to improve it, you’d go crazy because it’s already perfect.

Though the Open wasn’t held during World War II, the Inquirer noted, the U.S. Golf Association teamed with the PGA of America to sponsor a national event in 1942, the Hale America Open, at Ridgemoor Country Club outside Chicago. Ben Hogan won it, and Hines figured he’d better play the course as part of his quest, in case it ever gets reclassified as an Open.

Since completing his Open puzzle completed in 2011, Hines has since turned his attention to any course that has hosted a major championship. “That’s my next goal— playing all of them,” he told the Inquirer. “I’ve played most of the British Open courses, but I need one more trip to play the English courses. I’ve played Augusta National.

Hines still has about 30 courses left that have hosted PGA Championships, however, because unlike the Open courses, which tend to be clustered on the country’s two coasts or in or near large Midwestern cities, PGA venues have been spread out more across America.

“But the good Lord and my body willing,” Hines told the Inquirer, “I’m going to play them all.”