For more than 20 years doctors, family and colleagues have tried to get former NBC 10 reporter Bill Baldini to fix his knee but he couldn't be convinced to have surgery.

It took retirement for Baldini to have knee replacement surgery and NBC 10 went along to see how it all turned out.

It's a side of Baldini you haven't seen before.

Since his retirement last year, he's gone from interviewing local leaders and traveling the globe, to hanging with his precious grandsons, Sean and Matthew.

Baldini also played a little golf, until a knee problem that started when he was 19 years old finally sent him to the clubhouse.

"By the end of 18 holes my body felt great but my knee would be swollen. I would have to take pills and ice it and that gets tiresome," Baldini said.

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"Bill has struggled for a long time," orthopedic surgeon Dr. Arthur Bartolozzi said.

Bartolozzi, a former doctor to the Eagles, showed what Baldini's knee looked like through an X-ray.

"You can see that there is absolutely no space here. It is bone kissing bone," Bartolozzi said.

"Forty years of abuse. It's finally time for it to go. I'm getting a new one," Baldini said.

Bartolozzi said knee replacement is an ideal solution for an older person who has knee pain and wants to golf.

But he said the word replacement is misleading.

"We don't cut the knee off here and here and put a new knee in. It's basically a resurfacing of all the parts that rub," Bartolozzi said.

Even before the most dedicated golfers would be out of bed, Baldini and his wife Joanie left for Pennsylvania Hospital on Jan. 29.

"I am not an early bird," Baldini said.

At the hospital, Baldini's knee was marked so there was no mistake about which joint to operate on.

Baldini kissed his wife and went into the surgery that took about an hour to perform. He seemed completely at ease as he rolled into the operating room.

Bartolozzi shaved down damaged bone and cartilage. The bottom of the thigh bone was replaced with a metal joint. The gliding surface became a high density plastic. They were cemented into place and supported by Baldini's own ligaments and muscles.

"It's the gold standard as we speak today," Bartolozzi said.

It's been about three weeks since the surgery.

Baldini said he is currently undergoing rehabilitation on his knee. He said for the past 40 years he has felt pain in his knee and now he doesn't.

"I'm feeling great. I'm looking forward to getting out and about real soon," he said.

On a scale of one to 10 his pain level in the beginning was at a five but now it's at a two, Baldini said.

Baldini said he is concerned about how the surgery will affect his golf game.

"I hope it affects my golf game for the better," he said. "Before I was always on a slant because my knee was so bent."

Baldini said he is happy he finally had the surgery after so many years.

"I think that it was just the idea that if God put it there I'm going to leave it there. But it got to a point that I didn't have much of a choice anymore. My quality of life was so bad," he said. "I'm glad I did it now. The doctors did a great job."