There is a scene in Ocean’s 12, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, in which an inconspicuous fellow, acting as a decoy, leaves a Paris museum carrying a priceless Fabergé Egg in his similarly indistinct backpack. He walks to the city’s Gare du Nord train station where he boards a train to Rome, trying to attract as little attention as possible.
John Morton, a 38-year-old PGA professional from Birmingham, Ala., and a devoted collector of golf memorabilia, can relate. He might not have been part of an elaborate plan involving a multi-national security firm or have been followed by a team of crack American thieves. The glamorous streets of Paris might have been replaced by those of a quiet English town, and the contents of his backpack might not have been quite so extravagant. But he was carrying precious cargo of great interest… to golf history fans, at least.
Morton is immersed in the world of golf collectibles. Two weeks before it came up for auction, he learned of a rare item becoming available at an auction house in the walled city of Canterbury, 60 miles southeast of London. The Canterbury Auction Galleries, known more for its furniture, silver, and jewelry departments, would be welcoming bids for an Old Tom Morris feathery, made sometime between 1848 and 1851.
Featheries, of course, are ancient golf balls—feather-filled leather pouches in use from medieval times to the middle of the 19th century. The premier purveyor in St. Andrews from the mid-1830s to the late 1840s was Allan Robertson, a highly skilled ballmaker and golfer to whom Morris (a first cousin once removed and five years Robertson’s junior) was apprenticed and served as an employee for a total of nine years. During that time, the two would become successful playing partners—never losing a match when paired together—and close friends, falling out only briefly in 1848 when Robertson saw Morris playing with a gutty (a ball made inexpensively from a tree sap called gutta-percha and which sounded the death knell for the feathery industry).
Though that awkward moment is often cited as the reason for his departure, Morris had, in truth, become sufficiently skilled and experienced to open his own shop (at 15 The Links) by then, making featheries of which only five are known to still exist.
Morris aficionado that he is, Morton had to have the one being sold in Canterbury. Working in his favor was the fact the golf-collecting community didn’t know much about it as it wasn’t offered by a golf-devoted auctioneer. “That was key to me winning it for the price I did,” says Morton. “Having only a few ‘trained’ eyes on it was definitely an advantage.”
But while winning the auction was relatively painless—Morton’s final bid of $7,000 was good enough (he feared he’d need to go significantly higher)—actually getting his hands on the ball would prove far more complicated.
Shipping it was out of the question as getting the ball to Alabama safely would be extremely expensive and meant it being handled by people who couldn’t have known how fragile or valuable it was. Morton would just have to go to England and get it himself.
A trip to England might be fun, Morton thought, but he couldn’t see a window on his calendar that might work. For starters, he and his wife Jordan, a professional golfer herself, had a trip to Scotland fast approaching. “We could have gone via London but changing the flights and adding a stopover would have cost a fortune,” Morton says. “Plus, there were only so many times the auction house was open for customer pick-ups, and I could only be gone when my day job allowed it.”
After considering his options, Morton saw there was only one way he could get the ball without it breaking the bank, that would allow him to keep his job, that wouldn’t upset Jordan excessively (Morton says his wife happily tolerates his obsession), and that would mean the Scotland trip needn’t be postponed. Not only would Morton have to go himself, but he’d also need to get there and back in 24 hours, or thereabouts.
Morton, who earlier this year founded Auld Grey Toun Golf Books & Collectibles which imports golf history books from overseas for North American readers, left home at noon on August 11th and took off from Birmingham-Shuttlesworth bound for Charlotte-Douglas at 2 pm. He was on his way to London Heathrow at 7 pm and, at 8 am GMT, he touched down in England.
Because he’d planned the logistics so meticulously, Morton was about the 11th person off the rear of the plane and, after locating his rental car, he was on the road within an hour.
Morton arrived in Canterbury at approximately midday and spent a few minutes explaining to the auctioneer the significance of the item he’d just traveled over 4,000 miles to collect, and that he wasn’t especially keen on James Bond; Cyril Whiting, the professional at Royal St. George’s from 1971 to 1989 and the ball’s previous owner, was a regular partner of 007 creator Ian Fleming, hence the assumption Morton was a big Bond fan.
“Then I placed the ball in a carrycase with satin inlay, put the case in my backpack, and walked back to my car,” says Morton who appreciates the connection to the scene in Ocean’s 12.
“I suppose it did feel a bit like that,” he says. “But I doubt anyone I passed would’ve had any idea the thing in my backpack was worth anything.”
Morton was back at Heathrow by 3 pm and, after a sleepy flight back to Charlotte and a connection to Birmingham, was back home a little more than a day after he’d left.
The ball now sits proudly in the center of Morton’s Old Tom Morris shrine, and he is enjoying telling friends and family the story of why he hurriedly crossed the Atlantic to get something even he admits looks like a moldy old rock.
