Walking with Jack
A Father's Journey to Become His Son's Caddie
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A long-standing promise from a father to his five-year-old son . . .
A poignant diary that chronicles the journey
When Don Snyder was teaching the game of golf to his young son, Jack, they made a pact: if one day Jack became good enough to play on a pro golf tour, Don would walk beside him as his caddie. Years later, Jack had developed into a standout college golfer, and Don, at the age of fifty-eight, left the comfort of his Maine home and moved to St. Andrews, Scotland, to learn from the best caddies in the world. He worked loops on famed courses like the Old Course and Kingsbarns, fought his way onto the rotation as a full-time caddie, and recorded the fascinating stories of golfers from every station in life. All the while, he lived like a monk and sent his earnings back home.
A world away, Jack endured his own arduous trials, rising through the ranks and battling within the college golf system. At times, the question for the teenage athlete wasn’t how to continue . . . but whether to continue at all. Finally, Don and Jack approached the moment when they would reunite—and not only tackle an extraordinarily high level of golf competition but also confront the challenges of a father-son relationship that had inevitably changed since the days when their journey began.
Walking with Jack is a truly compelling golf story and a one-of-a-kind narrative that makes you appreciate the lengths to which a father will go to support his son.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In order to recapture the closeness he and his son once shared before gradually growing apart, writer and golfer Snyder (The Cliff Walk) decides to become a caddie so that he can carry his son's bags when Jack enters the pro circuit in this plodding account. Arranged chronologically according to diary entries he kept from December 2006 to February 2012, Snyder describes the hardships and the victories of his caddie apprenticeship at St. Andrews Old Course in Scotland. He endures the chill and downpours, and he walks over 1,000 miles carrying the golf bags of others, but he reassures himself, noting, "Someday you will be caddying for your son when every shot will count.... Keep your eyes open and your head up and you will always learn something new." In 2011, after a trying college career, Jack makes it onto the Adams Golf Pro Tour, and his father proudly accompanies him, trying to stay as close as possible cringing when his son performs poorly and offering encouragement along the way. Snyder's tedious recap of every hole Jack plays on the tour carries the story far off the fairway, losing it in the rough.