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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.
Prologue
From as far back as I can remember, when my son, Jack, was still putting his shoes on the wrong feet, there was always golf drawing us together, and we were always making one last long putt across the living room floor or one final great shot in the back yard for the Championship of the world. Even then all I wanted was never to lose him the way my father had lost me, and so the two of us pledged that no matter what happened, he would become a pro golfer some day in the bright future of our time, and I would be his caddie so that I could walk beside him for as far as the game might take us.
REVIEWS
THE WASHINGTON POST
“It’s a grand claim to make, but let’s risk it: The literature of golf is unrivaled in American sports. The fine-grained prose in the golf essays of John Updike, the polished golf reporting of Herbert Warren Wind at the New Yorker in the 1950s and ‘60s and the current lucid work by Michael Bamberger in Sports Illustrated are unmatched. . . . The excellence continues. If [Walking With Jack] . . . were evaluated solely on the basis of effort expended—never mind the fascination of the stories told—[it] would still be impressive.”
RICK KOGAN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE / WGN RADIO
"“This lovely, funny, touching, poignant book is unlike any you have ever read. . . . Snyder is a writer of great compassion, style and understanding. And a pretty damn good dad too. About fathers and sons? Yes, but so, so much more, as Moby Dick is more than a novel about fishing.”
EXAMINER.COM
"You've never read a golf story like this. Never. The fact that it is true - and that in addition to being a great golf story it so beautifully illustrates the love of a father for his son - makes it all the more remarkable. If you've been looking for the perfect Father's Day gift for your dad, you've just found it."
BIOGRAPHILE
“Don Snyder has teed up one of this year’s finest tributes to the sport. . . . [He] breaks the boundaries of sports, sinking his tale squarely into the most relatable realm of all: family ties.”
ARTICLES
A Dad, A Son, And A Dream
A father's journey to become his son's caddie, from Maine to Scotland to Texas.
I was 57 years old in the winter of 2008 when I left my home in Maine and went to St. Andrews, Scotland, to work as a full-time caddie, to learn as much as I could from the veteran caddies there so that one day I could meet a promise I had made to my son almost two decades earlier: If he ever became good enough at golf to play on a pro tour, I would be his caddie.
The first time I met Don J. Snyder, it was just after my son, a friend and I had finished playing the wonderful little seaside links course in Elie, Scotland. Don and I had some mutual friends, and he was living in the area while caddieing up the road in St. Andrews. All the previous winter, Don had been preparing to be a St. Andrews caddy by carrying a golf bag full of rocks around the course at Elie in conditions that can most succinctly be described as lousy. When it's February and the icy wind is whipping in off the North Sea, walking Elie is no walk in the park.
GOLF DIGEST
EXAMINER
Doubleday | 352 pages | ISBN 978-0385536356 | May 14, 2013
WALKING WITH JACK
A Father's Journey to Become His Son's Caddie
MORE ARTICLES
Don’s Talk at The Chicago Club
Don J. Snyder reading, Live from Prairie Lights, on October 19, 2013
Memoirist and novelist Don Snyder reads from his memoir. “Walking with Jack” is a poignant diary of a father's journey to the hallowed golf courses of St. Andrews, Scotland, to fulfill his dream of becoming a caddie and join his son—a promising young golfer standing at a crossroads—for his debut on the professional tour.
A Father’s Journey to Become His Son’s Caddie - 90.9 WBUR
Mark Twain described the sport of golf as “A good walk spoiled.” Eighteen tiny holes dotted across a vast course — with only yourself to blame if things go wrong between the tee and the pin. But, in golf, there is a shoulder to lean on, a light in dark places– a shepherd. The caddie.
DISCUSSIONS
