In the March/April issue of Golf Journal, Dave Gould wrote an interesting account of a staff member at the United States Golf Association in the late 1980s who requested permission to photograph the gutta percha golf balls used by Francis Ouimet, Harry Vardon, and Ted Ray during the the 1913 U.S. Open Championship. She needed photos for an article and "took a vow of supreme caution" with the items. Permission was reluctantly granted, and she laid the priceless artifacts on a felt cloth. "We had no studio, so I used to use the porch of the upstairs conference room to shoot my stills," recalled the employee. "I remember setting up the shot just the way I wanted it, then turning away to pick up my camera. When I looked back, the balls were somehow off the cloth, rolling into the hole of a pipe that led straight down to the main storm-drain system."
For a few seconds her heart skipped a beat and her life flashed before her eyes. She went running for a maintenance person, who said he thought there was a screen or a trap at the end of the pipe before it reached the main sewer line. "If he had been wrong, those golf balls would have never been seen again. But it turned out there was a trap, and he fished them out - all muddy, but otherwise okay." She cleaned up the balls, photographed them, and returned them to the exhibit, where they still reside.