Mr. Adler has the tee …

Let’s first push aside any notion this hinges on science. Neither of us has studied infectious disease, and so we are settling the question from the same basically informed perspective that it’s safe to resume conducting professional golf tournaments. So the question isn’t if 156 caddies unduly add to the human footprint, but if they are essential to the event.

And I say they absolutely are.

Cameramen and audio technicians will be there, so let’s remember why we watch golf on TV in the first place. Because the game contested at its absolute highest level is compelling. You, Sam, and your hacker friends might enjoy seeing a fit and well-dressed pro brought down a peg or two by hoofing his own bag, but this is the same base impulse at play when you smirk at a tabloid headline about the Royals or Brad Pitt. It’s golf schaudenfreude, and don’t try to masquerade it as anything else.

A biathlete carries a rifle on his back as he races his lungs out on skis, but that sport is primarily about fitness. Perhaps you’ve only experienced it in accidental spurts, but golf is a subtle exam of skill and strategy. It’s why we’re treated more than occasionally to battles across generations, like Tom Watson nearly winning The Open at 59 or Davis Love III winning a PGA Tour event at 51. In a world where pros carry their bags, over the course of 72 holes fitness (and thus age) will become a disproportionate factor. No disrespect to the Bo Hoags and Harry Higgs of the tour, but we’ll see a lot more 20-somethings hanging on to win while Phil Mickelson bogeys out and Tiger Woods withdraws. Thrilling.

Not that you’d ever play four consecutive rounds of rattlebottom, but the mental drain of performing close to mistake-free for that period of time is hard to overstate. These guys carry intricate green maps not just to read putts, but to plan the speed and spin of approach shots to get the ball to feed just right off contours into straight, uphill looks at birdie. These guys play chess across 7,400-yard boards, but it becomes checkers when their mental attention is occupied with cleaning grooves, wiping balls, pacing sprinklers and juggling rakes.

In these first events back, presumably, most of the entourage (agents, trainers, psychologists, family and friends) is not going to be permitted. Give a tour pro at least one man upon whom he can rely. For the sake of the quality of your own entertainment.

Of course, golf is better with caddies. I have a son who is a caddie. Carts don’t find my errant drives, they’re useless on club selection, and I can’t tell you the last time one offered an encouraging word after I’ve skulled a wedge. In the words of former presidential candidate John Kerry, I was for caddies before I was against them.

But the issue here isn’t whether caddies add to the golf experience. Instead it is, like everything these days, delineating between what is essential and non-essential. When tech companies are looking to launch, they call it identifying the “MVP”— minimum viable product. And for professional golf as it precariously seeks to resume its schedule, viability hinges on safety, entertainment value and competitive integrity.

A PGA Tour “MVP” does not depend on caddies, and when it comes to safety, their presence is counter to the objective. Start with the obvious: restricting caddies would avoid the inevitable close interaction with players. But there would be subtler implications as well. No caddies means 156 fewer bodies to feed and shelter, and to sidestep gingerly around at practice areas and in parking lots. Most importantly when it comes to the most valuable commodity, it’s 156 fewer people who would need to be administered a COVID-19 test. We start running low on those and events are getting scrapped altogether.

As for entertainment, the tour’s primary objective in the absence of fans on site is to produce compelling live content, an opportunity magnified by the conspicuous void of sports everywhere else. Save for some notable exceptions—Steve Williams violently ripping away a photographer’s camera, for instance, or Michael Greller engaged with Jordan Spieth in a prolonged, overly intricate debate over shot selection—caddies rarely make the highlight packages.

Lastly there’s the competitive makeup of the event, admittedly one element that would be altered by the absence of caddies, but not fatally so. In recent days, tour players like Adam Hadwin have expressed reservations about competing without rakes in bunkers or with flagsticks remaining in holes, so you can imagine how they’d resist having to take a cart, or better yet, carrying their own bags. But would anyone really question if they’re still playing golf? Is this not how they were all recently playing at the highest levels of the college game?

Perhaps the best comparison is the NHL and NBA, leagues that are both exploring playoff tournaments held without fans, which is far more consequential than in golf because it eliminates the decided advantages of playing before a home crowd. But even then, the core game is intact. The best score wins.

LOW GROSS: Like another one of your 5 for 4’s, I concede your point on minimum viable product. I will be tuned in when Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler and Matt Wolff play best-ball skins at Seminole on May 17 in four carts with no caddies. It’s fantastic that with a modified format golf can the first major live sport to be broadcast since the world shut down. But as far as an official PGA Tour event, there’s a standard there we shouldn’t mess with.

LOW NET: Maybe so, but this harrowing moment is forcing us to rethink how everything works. It’s why Jimmy Fallon is hosting the “Tonight Show” from home, and why our kids are attending school over Zoom in their pajamas. These are not choices made between the best version of something or one stripped to its core. With safety paramount, it’s the choice between the simple version, or nothing at all.

The post Should the PGA Tour return without caddies? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

https://soundcloud.com/user-96678684/how-golf-digest-helped-an-inmate-win-his-freedom-after-27-years

The story of a man freed after spending 27 years in jail for a crime he did not commit resonates beyond just the world of golf. It’s no surprise, then, that when Valentino Dixon, who Golf Digest first profiled in 2012 as he wiled away time in Attica prison on a murder charge drawing golf illustrations, walked out of a New York county court house a free man on Wednesday the story would become national news.

In the wake of the court’s decision to vacate Dixon’s conviction, several news outlets in the U.S. and aboard recounted the 48-year-old’s harrowing story.

WATCH: Valentino Dixon leaves the courthouse and is a free man for the first time in decades. pic.twitter.com/mbrsRouypP

— WBEN NewsRadio 930AM (@NewsRadio930) September 19, 2018

That Golf Digest played a role in Dixon’s release is one of the most humbling moments in our history. When Max Adler interviewed him for the original profile—after the inmate wrote to us to tell him how drawing golf courses had become a needed diversion—Dixon professed his innocence of the crime. Adler, now Golf Digest’s editorial director, dug further. In his reporting, he eventually talked to LaMarr Scott, already in prison on other charges, who confessed to the crime that Dixon was accused of.

Building on Adler’s work were other entities—notably a group of Georgetown University students working to help freed the wrongly imprisoned—that helped build a case that the Erie County district attorney’s Wrongful Convictions Unit couldn’t ignore.

On this edition of the Golf Digest Podcast, Adler talks with Sam Weinman and Keely Levins about how he first learned of Dixon and his story, what compelled him to dig further and what it was like for him to be outside the courthouse and talk to a now freed Dixon.

And here’s a sampling of the coverage from several major news outlets:

The Today Show

The New York Times
How Golf Digest and college students helped free a man convicted of murder

The Washington Post
How Golf Digest helped free a golf-course artist imprisoned 27 years for a murder he didn’t commit

Deadspin
Golf Digest helped free an innocent man from prison

Forbes
How A Golf Digest Article Helped Free An Innocent Man From Prison

New York Post
How Golf Digest helped free an innocent man from prison

USA Today
Love of golf figures prominently as wrongly convicted inmate released after 27 years

Awful Announcing
Valentino Dixon’s murder conviction vacated after 27 years in jail, thanks partly to Golf Digest reporting on his case

BBC News
New York inmate’s golf drawings lead to exoneration in murder

The Telegraph
How golf drawings helped free man convicted of a murder he did not commit

Daily Mail
Golf Digest helps to free artist wrongly convicted of murder

The post How Golf Digest helped Valentino Dixon win his freedom appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Max Adler
After 27 years in prison, a man who loves golf walked free today. Not only that, he was given back his innocence. Of course, the state can regift innocence about as capably as it can 27 years.

Nevertheless, the Erie County District Court in Buffalo, N.Y., has vacated the murder conviction of Valentino Dixon, 48, who was serving a 39-years-to-life sentence—the bulk of it in the infamous Attica Correctional Facility—for the 1991 killing of Torriano Jackson. On that hot August night long ago, both were at a loud street party with underage drinking when a fistfight over a girl turned to gunfire.

But before we dive into what really happened, a quick refresher on why golfers might care extra about Valentino Dixon. Six years ago, Golf Digest profiled this inmate who grinds colored pencils to their nubs drawing meticulously detailed golf-scapes. Although Dixon has never hit a ball or even stepped foot on a course, the game hooked him when a golfing warden brought in a photograph of Augusta National’s 12th hole for the inmate to render as a favor. In the din and darkness of his stone cell, the placid composition of grass, sky, water and trees spoke to Dixon. And the endless permutations of bunkers and contours gave him a subject he could play with.

“The guys can’t understand,” Dixon has said. “They always say I don’t need to be drawing this golf stuff. I know it makes no sense, but for some reason my spirit is attuned to this game.”

A sampling of Dixon’s golf illustrations.

It took about a hundred drawings before Golf Digest noticed, but when we did, we also noticed his conviction seemed flimsy. So we investigated the case and raised the question of his innocence.

The case is complicated, but on the surface it involves shoddy police work, zero physical evidence linking Dixon, conflicting testimony of unreliable witnesses, the videotaped confession to the crime by another man, a public defender who didn’t call a witness at trial, and perjury charges against those who said Dixon didn’t do it. All together, a fairly clear instance of local officials hastily railroading a young black man with a prior criminal record into jail. Dixon’s past wasn’t spotless, he had sold some cocaine, but that didn’t make him a murderer.

Golf Digest’s 2012 article led to further national spotlights on the case by NBC/Golf Channel, CRTV.com, Fox Sports, the Georgetown University Prison Reform Project and others. Alongside this, Dixon’s daughter, Valentina, led a grassroots campaign to raise money for her father’s legal fees by selling his artwork online. Still, the gears of the legal system refused to turn. As of Christmas 2017, appeals exhausted, Dixon’s petitions for pardon or clemency drew no response from New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s office.

But now suddenly, a vacated conviction—which means innocence—a far more lofty legal victory. Why now?

It rises from a confluence of factors, according to Donald Thompson, who along with Alan Rosenthal, filed Dixon’s latest motion (which included the Golf Digest article) pro bono. “Once a case crosses a certain threshold of media attention, it matters, even though it shouldn’t,” Thompson says. “It’s embarrassing for the legal system that for a long time the best presentation of the investigation was from a golf magazine.”

Thompson says Golf Digest’s work eventually was eclipsed by the recent report filed by the Erie County district attorney’s wrongful convictions unit, which is a new type of department popping up in various districts these days. Their report was helped by the Georgetown University students, a group of undergraduates who have also created documentaries, websites and social-media campaigns around three other individuals thought to be wrongfully imprisoned, as part of a class. “They did a great job of speaking to witnesses who could still be located, as well as getting Chris Belling [who prosecuted Dixon] to say things at variance with positions he’s argued in the past.”

Dixon rubbed colored pencils to their nubs while drawing.

Also not to be discounted is the value of fresh blood. Frank Sedita III, the longtime Erie County district attorney who’s said that society ought to be more concerned with “wrongful acquittals,” is out. The new man, John Flynn, has been in the job a year, and it’s basically due to his blessing that Dixon was released.

Of course, one small matter to be addressed before a man’s guilt is absolved is to place it on someone else. Just before Dixon walked out of the courthouse, LaMarr Scott walked in and officially plead guilty to Jackson’s murder. Scott admitted responsibility the night of the shooting and has for decades since (including to Golf Digest), with the exception of a brief window of time when Belling pressured him to say otherwise. Scott is already serving a life sentence for a 1993 shooting in an armed robbery that left one victim a quadriplegic. Tacking on a concurrent sentence for Jackson’s murder doesn’t change his prospects, other than maybe making any future parole a slimmer possibility.

Where’s Dixon heading after the courthouse? “I’m going to Red Lobster to celebrate with my family and my support team, then we’re going to go a park,” he said. The next day he’s going to visit his grandmother, and the day after that he’s going to buy a cellphone and register for a passport at the post office so he can visit his wife of 12 years, Louise, who lives in Australia. She has a golden heart, and the two met because she has spent her life seeking to help those she can.

“So many times I’ve come close [to giving up], but God kept giving me the strength to keep on and now I know why,” Dixon told me by phone, hours after learning of his impending freedom.

The careers of the people who put Dixon away will not be impacted. All have either retired or moved to new positions. “The positive is that this case could serve as a shining example to wrongful convictions units elsewhere,” Thompson says.

Lesser men would’ve broken. With his mind and body in tact, Dixon hopefully has some good years ahead. Maybe he’ll even take up golf.

 

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After 27 years in prison, Valentino Dixon walked free today. With an investigation Golf Digest’s Max Adler helped open, an county court vacated Dixon’s murder conviction. Adler was there to greet Dixon as he left the courthouse. For more on how Dixon found a passion for golf through art and how that led to Golf Digest raising the question of his innocence, tap the link in bio. (?:Twitter/@NewsRadio930)

A post shared by Golf Digest (@golfdigest) on Sep 19, 2018 at 3:44pm PDT

The post For Valentino Dixon, a wrong righted appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.