The now 54-year-old had spent more than 27 years in jail convicted of murder — locked up inside one of America’s most brutal maximum security prisons for a crime he didn’t commit, before he was allowed to walk away a free man 2018, exonerated of any crime after the real perpetrator confessed.

READ MORE: How Golf Digest helped Valentino get his freedom
Obama gifts a Dixon drawing to wife
Valentino lived with uncertainty for decades. His advice to us

With a few magazine photos for inspiration — Dixon had written to Golf Digest asking for help, explaining how drawing golf courses had become a needed diversion — he spent his time in Attica prison drawing, perfecting his style over the many, many years with only some pieces of card and a few pencils to create his artwork. Wonderful, unique depictions of famous courses such as Augusta, Pebble Beach and the Country Club in Brookline emerged over the years — as did some of the most famous courses in Dubai, a place that had found a special place in Dixon’s heart.

Valentino Dixon. Mark Mathew/Golf Digest Middle East

While Dixon’s wrongful conviction, and Golf Digest’s part in his eventual release is absorbing, emotional and well documented, the man has finally achieved one of his dreams five years after his walk to freedom — visiting the courses in Dubai that he drew in prison to help him cling on to hope of one day seeing the outside world.

On Tuesday, Dixon visited Golf Digest Middle East’s offices in Dubai while on a tour to visit those courses that helped him through his darkest times — from the Address Montgomerie and Dubai Creek to Jebel Ali, Emirates Golf Club to Arabian Ranches — and talk about his journey.

Valentino Dixon. Mark Mathew/Golf Digest Middle East

“In prison you live in a dream sometimes, you live in your own world,” he told me, his eyes repeatedly drawn to the windows of our 33rd floor office, admiring the towers and the views of the ocean. “And you look for anything that can give you inspiration. Something that can give you hope, something that can invigorate your spirit. And looking at pictures of Dubai during my time, it had to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life, even though I was seeing it through a magazine.

“While I was drawing these other golf courses, I said to myself: ‘I might as well draw the most beautiful place on the planet,’ which is Dubai, in my opinion. This is why I drew these seven pictures of these golf courses right here. And this is why I am here today.”

Pick up the December issue of Golf Digest Middle East to read the full interview with Valentino Dixon

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The post Inspirational art: After 27 years in prison, wrongfully convicted Valentino Dixon realises a dream in Dubai appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

WE’RE BUYING

Masters invites: ’Tis the season for a lucky few golfers to get the greatest piece of mail ever. No matter who you are, it never gets old. And it never gets old watching reactions like this:

 

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By the way, we’re already inside 100 days until the Masters. Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that patrons will be back in April. And if I’m lucky enough to go, fingers crossed I’ll be able to chew again by then. As Dustin Johnson noted, those Augusta National sandwiches are incredible.

Valentino Dixon: While we’re on the subject of Augusta National, a rendition of the famed 12th hole by our favourite artist wound up in the hands of Barack Obama:

 

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A post shared by Barack Obama (@barackobama)

It’s the latest chapter in Dixon’s tragic, yet inspiring journey. The man who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit and was freed thanks in part to Golf Digest’s Max Adler, is now creating art that’s hanging in the home of a former President of the United States. Amazing. Speaking of Christmas gifts …

Josh Allen: In his third NFL season, the Buffalo Bills QB hasn’t just morphed into an MVP candidate, but one of the best teammates you could ask for. Just look at how he treated his offensive line for Christmas:

Bills QB @JoshAllenQB’s gift to his offensive linemen this year: a set of Callaway golf clubs and lessons at Crag Burn Golf Club pic.twitter.com/QCRsxPagFm

— Marcel Louis-Jacques (@Marcel_LJ) December 22, 2020

Just give this guy the MVP right now. What a great gesture. And a smart one as well for team bonding. Yep, the future looks bright in Buffalo. Speaking of bright futures …

Charlie Woods: Yeah, yeah, it’s been a couple of weeks, but how cool was seeing this young dude playing with Pops? And playing so well? The kid made his first eagle on national TV! And gave us the moment of the tournament with this familiar-looking fist pump:

?Charlie Woods fist pump ?

The low uppercut. A Woods special. pic.twitter.com/KhJPSC1Sw4

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) December 20, 2020

He’s also already getting kids all over the country into the sport:

My motto for 2021: pic.twitter.com/nx5AnSlsX1

— Alex Myers (@AlexMyers3) January 1, 2021

OK, so my daughter had no interest in watching one second of the PNC Championship, but she’ll get there. Hopefully. In any event, no matter how Charlie’s golf career winds up going, he’s already got better highlights than 99.999 percent of golfers. And after performing so well under such pressure, those sixth-grade finals are going to be a breeze.

WE’RE SELLING

People knocking people getting excited about Charlie Woods: Unfortunately, much of Golf Twitter clutched its collective pearls and couldn’t allow themselves to just enjoy this. “He’s just a kid! Stop putting all these expectations on him!” First of all, who exactly was seriously saying Charlie is going to win 100 PGA Tour titles and 25 majors? No one! Also, if the most private person on the planet wanted to trot his son out there for the world to see, then that’s all you need to know. It was awesome to watch. End of story.

People knocking Kyle Berkshire’s chances: In case you haven’t read or heard it (Subscribe to our Local Knowledge Podcast, please!), I put together a story about the reigning World Long Drive champ’s decision to pursue a second career as a tour pro.

And so far, about 90 percent of comments are that the 24-year-old is wasting his time or has no chance. Look, would I bet on him making it to the PGA Tour? No. But I think it’s pretty cool that a guy who dropped out of college before cracking the starting lineup would put so much on the line to give this such a serious try. And considering Berkshire’s staggering length and the importance of distance in today’s game (SEE: DeChambeau, Bryson), now seems like a good time to give it a go. At the very least, it should be fun to watch. So good luck, Kyle, and bombs away.

This shirt:

It’s actually a hilarious concept. Get a shirt to memorialize a golf buddy’s worst blowup hole. But it instantly gave me nightmarish flashbacks to the double bogey I made on the 10th hole at Mid Pines during the final round of last year’s HGGA Championship. And the triple bogey I made on the 14th hole when I was still in the hunt. I am such a choker it’s not even funny. But this shirt on someone else kind of is. OK, maybe I’m buying.

This jackass:

Very sorry for a Bledge and the RCP team. Course in outstanding nick despite this. Let’s hope the Kent Constabulary catch them? pic.twitter.com/swxd9BO5qh

— Tim Checketts (@CheckettsTim) December 28, 2020

Now that is someone who deserves to spend a long time in prison.

ON TAP

The PGA Tour is back! And it’s calendar-opening Sentry Tournament of Champions is more loaded than it has been for a long time. Almost all of 2020’s winners accepted their invite and because of the weird season, anyone in the top 30 of the final FedEx Cup list got invited as well. So it’s not really a “tournament of champions” this year, but a tournament of champions and really good players.

Random tournament fact: All told, 17 players got the nod who normally wouldn’t, and 42 of the 45 players eligible accepted. A vacation in Hawaii to play for a big purse against a limited field with no cut? Merry Christmas, indeed.

RANDOM PROP BETS OF THE WEEK

—Kyle Berkshire will win a major by the time he’s 25: 1 MILLION-to-1 odds
—Charlie Woods will win a major by the time he’s 25: 825-to-1 odds (Actual odds!)
—Charlie Woods was the coolest kid in school when he returned from winter break: LOCK

PHOTO(S) OF THE WEEK

There were a couple of Anthony Kim sightings recently. First, with longtime swing coach(!) Adam Schriber:

 

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A post shared by Adam Schriber (@adam.schriber)

And then the funniest one yet. A sighting in which the person taking the photo didn’t even realize it was an AK sighting, but focused on former Oklahoma football coach Bob Stoops instead:

taking a picture of Bob Stoops that accidentally includes Anthony Kim is like taking a selfie on a hike and getting Bigfoot in the shot pic.twitter.com/eIhhtzQxBA

— Dylan Dethier (@dylan_dethier) January 2, 2021

That’s how long he’s been gone. Crazy. Also, many have pointed out the comparison to seeing Big Foot, but there’s one key difference. Anthony Kim is REAL. And he was spectacular. And as much as I’m happy to see he’s still out there, each sighting is a sad reminder of what could have been.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Check out Austria’s Matthias Schwab playing golf on his skis:

 

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How has this dude not won on the European Tour yet? Anyway, love the concept and the Hosung Choi-esque follow-through. See? It really works!

THIS WEEK IN TOUR PRO PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

Props to Brooks Koepka and Jena Sims for coming up with the most creative Christmas card of the season:

 

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A post shared by Jena Sims (@jenamsims)

THIS AND THAT

Jon Rahm made huge equipment news by switching from TaylorMade to Callaway. I guess rocketing to World No. 1 faster than almost anyone in history wasn’t good enough. … Speaking of equipment, shoutout to Ryan French, AKA Monday Q Info on Twitter, for helping out high school and middle school golf teams in need this year. Here’s more info:

Goal in 2021 is to help 12 high schools or middle school teams in need. 1 is going to be my hometown girl's team, so will need 11 others. If you are a coach or know of a team in need please DM me, I will try to help the teams that are in need the most. Going to do 1 per month.

— Monday Q Info (@acaseofthegolf1) December 28, 2020

And finally, congrats to Kiawah’s Ocean Course for securing a second major championship of 2021. In addition to May’s PGA Championship, this year’s HGGA Championship—AKA my annual golf trip—will also be held there. What an honor for this spectacular venue!

RANDOM QUESTIONS TO PONDER

What hole will I choke away this year’s HGGA?
Where will we see Anthony Kim next?
Why didn’t I listen to my dentist as a kid?

The post Brooks Koepka’s creative Christmas card, inspirational holiday gifts and the funniest Anthony Kim sighting yet appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Max Adler
Former President and current middle-handicapper Barack Obama received a special golf gift this Christmas. Michelle gave her husband a drawing of the 12th hole at Augusta National that she purchased directly from the artist Valentino Dixon.

As has been well chronicled, Dixon was exonerated in 2018 after serving 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. His story was recently told again in a segment on HBO Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel that aired this October, which the former First Lady saw and was moved by. (Publicity disclosure: I’m interviewed in this show for my part in reporting the case.)

Dixon was both moved and surprised to get a phone call from Michelle’s assistant inquiring about an original. For much of the half a lifetime Dixon was locked in Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, N.Y., he imagined he wasn’t there, but the news of the result of the 2008 presidential election stands out as a vivid and real memory.

“It was a big day for us in the jail,” Dixon said. “Guys were going crazy, shaking the bars of the cells. That’s all we can do to celebrate a moment, and there was this feeling that here was a president who was finally going to do something for prison reform.”

Dixon’s mother, Barbara, worked the poll booths that election, the only time in her life she’s volunteered in a civic capacity.

So happens the result of the 2016 election created a similarly raucous atmosphere inside Attica. “Donald Trump wasn’t a politician, so he gave us hope, too, and people need that type of hope whether things will happen or not,” Dixon says. The success of the implementation of the First Step Act can be debated, but this bipartisan bill signed into law by President Trump in 2017 was the first criminal justice reform bill passed in nearly a decade.

Notable about the piece Michelle bought for Barack, a 20-inch-by-30-inch coloured-pencil on matte-board entitled “Augusta The Beautiful,” is that it was the first drawing Dixon completed as a free man.

“When I was in my six-by-eight-foot prison cell, I was drawing nonstop, 10 hours a day, never taking a day off. When I got out, I wondered would I have the same discipline?” Dixon says. In the two years he’s been out other ambitions have largely replaced a desire to work in isolation, such as travel, reconnecting with family, and hosting episodes of a program called ”Draw and Talk With Me” where invited guests to receive sketching lessons while discussing social issues. But the drawing that will presumably now hang on the wall of the 44th President of the United States is an answer to Dixon’s self-directed question.

“For me, my life is about redemption, leaving a legacy of some kind to remind people that they can overcome anything,” Dixon says. “Because we will each be tested in life, we just don’t know how.”

This Christmas morning of a trying year, for Valentino Dixon and the Obamas, it was good to both give and receive.

Along with the drawing Dixon recorded a video message for Barack Obama.

 

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A post shared by Valentino Dixon (@valentinodixon)

The post Former President Barack Obama’s big Christmas gift from his wife? An original golf drawing by Valentino Dixon appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Max Adler
If you’re feeling impatient, consider Valentino Dixon. He’s a terrible golfer, but anyone who reads Golf Digest knows he’s the guy who survived 27 years of wrongful imprisonment, and whose path to freedom began by getting our attention with his laboured and oddly beautiful golf course drawings. All that waiting and now he’s basically imprisoned at home, just like the rest of us. Of course, comparing the comfort of his mom’s house to a six-by-eight-foot cell is a gross mislabel, but it occurred that here’s a man whose perspective on the COVID-19 situation might be singular. So I gave Valentino a call.

Valentino had been planning to attend the Masters again this year, and his other projects slowed by the virus include sorting his Australian wife’s immigration status and producing a YouTube series that brings together art, travel and social issues in a unique format. There’s also his lawsuit against the city of Buffalo and Erie County being handled by the firm of Neufeld, Scheck and Brustin. You might think a guy keen on making up for lost time would be a little restless, but it’s just the opposite. Valentino thinks we should all be asking ourselves: “What do I need to do to come out of this a stronger person?”

After I got off the phone with Valentino, I was compelled to crank out a set of push-ups and then choose an old book off the shelf. I invite you to listen to our conversation in hopes you find similar motivation.

The post Valentino Dixon lived with uncertainty and isolation for decades. His advice for the rest of us appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Max Adler
This coloured-pencil drawing measures 20 by 30 inches, which was the largest size paperboard the artist could steady on his lap, seated in his prison cell, which measured six by eight feet. He guesses he created it in 2015 because he remembers being recently transferred within Attica (N.Y.) Correctional Facility. He’d occupied his previous cell for 13 years, but shortly after two convicts dug a tunnel out of the Clinton facility—events that provided the basis for the Ben Stiller TV mini-series “Escape at Dannemora”—“We started getting rotated more frequently to prevent us from growing too familiar with our surroundings,” Valentino Dixon says.

Of course, Dixon (above) was innocent of the murder for which he’d been serving time since 1991. Also distinguishing him from much of the prison population: He’d never decorated his cell. His art, his books, his imagination were his home—never the physical reality of his surroundings. “All those years, my mind was on the outside,” he says. “That’s how I survived.”

In September 2018, the unlikely story of how golf saved a man who’d never played the sport dominated a news cycle. The basic arc: A golf-loving warden brings a photo of Augusta National’s 12th hole for the talented inmate to draw as a favour, which begets a letter to Golf Digest and an investigation, and with the help of many supporters ends with an exoneration in a Buffalo courtroom.

This drawing, titled Amen Corner, is not an exact representation but a vision pieced together from disparate images. (I used to mail Inmate 91-B-1615 magazines heavy on course photography.) Dixon will see this place in person for the first time in April as a credentialed illustrator for Golf Digest at the Masters. Stay tuned for what he creates next.

The post A wronged man’s next stop: the Masters appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Max Adler
Perhaps you’ve already heard the backstory of Valentino Dixon’s artwork. That the man who spent 27 unjust years behind bars, exonerated this week, got into the game when golfing Attica warden James Conway brought in a photograph of Augusta National’s 12th hole for the inmate to render as a favour. Remarkably, the peace and possibility of golf somehow spoke to Dixon. Here is a collection of some of his work.

Valentino Dixon regularly mailed me his drawings over the past six years. Sometimes I mailed him copies of Golf Digest to use as reference material, but Dixon would also concoct golf scenes by extrapolating around something as simple and small as the flower on a stamp. They are made of layer upon exacting layer of colored pencil (Attica inmates are not allowed to have paint). All of his drawings are on paperboard, and the largest panels he uses are 30-inches by 20-inches; the smallest 7-inches by 9-inches. The constraints of his cell prevented him from going bigger. However, to subvert this limitation, a few times he made composites, where as many as nine paper boards fit together like a puzzle to form a massive 5-feet square image.

It almost needn’t be said, but the drawings are imbued with the weight of the place of their making. You can’t really see them without also seeing Dixon on the floor in his windowless cell, the unceasing clamor of vicious criminals and guards and slamming steel all around him. And after 10 hours of intense concentration, the artist laying his head on a bed without a pillow.

Despite being a lover of both golf and art, there’s not much golf art I like. A lot of it I find a bit cloying. But maybe because Dixon has never been on a golf course, never seen one in real life, his work is different. The look of a Dixon golf hole is surreal, dreamy, of another world. And against all odds and reason, his world is a magical one.

The post Valentino Dixon’s Surreal Golf Drawings 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.

By Max Adler
This month marks a dismal anniversary at Golf Digest. Five years ago in the July 2012 issue, we published the story of Valentino Dixon, an inmate at New York’s Attica Correctional Facility serving a 39-years-to-life sentence for second-degree murder. The golf hook: Dixon draws exquisitely detailed courses in colored pencil. Though he’s never set foot on a country club or even a muny, he got into the game when a golfing warden—who’d noticed Dixon’s talent poured into other subjects—brought in a photograph of Augusta National’s 12th for the inmate to render as a favor.

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

Valentino Dixon

When you consider he spends the bulk of his life in a windowless six-foot-by-eight-foot cell, a preference for limitless configurations of grass, trees, sky—and sand—begins to make sense. “That this game has kept my attention all these years speaks for itself. If my passion were not sincere, I would’ve given up a long time ago,” said Dixon, 47, who isn’t eligible for parole until 2030. He draws eight hours per day and has produced hundreds upon hundreds of pictures on paperboard, mostly 16-inch by 20-inch in dimension.

While the environment of their making imbues the images with a certain weight, the heavier storyline of our 2012 piece was Dixon’s claim of innocence, which hasn’t wavered in now 26 years behind bars. For a more thorough summary of the case we recommend our original piece, but you can read on here knowing it involves conflicting accounts of eyewitnesses, a confession from another man, zero physical evidence linking Dixon, and accusations of serious police and prosecutorial misconduct. Taken together, it’s a story that raises more questions than it answers. And as the hit Netflix documentary “Making a Murderer” demonstrated—which precipitated the overturned conviction of Branden Dassey—public fascination with the inner-workings of our criminal justice system is at perhaps an all-time high. In 2013, the Golf Channel’s Jimmy Roberts picked up our story, and in a filmed interview provoked the district attorney, Chris Belling, otherwise steadfast in his certainty of Dixon’s guilt, to admit, “We’re all human. We do make mistakes.”

So what has been the result of all this media? More attention, but little movement. Dixon has received personal visits from high quarters, such as Commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Anthony Annucci, who admired Dixon’s artwork and record of good behavior. Still, Dixon waits for his paperwork to reach the parole board, working in the prison barbershop, avoiding fights, drawing, hurriedly hanging up the phone whenever there’s a call for “lockdown.”

If there’s been progress, it’s come in an unexpected form. Even though Dixon has never actually seen the episode devoted to him (Golf Channel isn’t in Attica’s cable package), he’s now famous in the prison yard as the guy TV crews came to visit. Young inmates regularly approach Dixon for counsel on how to make an incarcerated life have meaning. Rather than be freed, he’s freeing others.

“I tell them it’s not over just because you’re in here. You can still find a way to make something of yourself, get your degree, find something to believe in,” Dixon said. “People from the inner city get in here and think there are no options for them.” Dixon continues to reread Man’s Search for Meaning by Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl. “By comparison to what he had to live through, I’m blessed.”

With a little tech help from the outside, Dixon is able to maintain a website, ValentinoGallery.com for selling his artwork. A couple in Australia commissioned their likeness in a golf portrait, and Dixon has sold several prints in the hundred-dollar range in the United Kingdom. But no sales in the United States so far.

“The American golfers dropped the ball,” Dixon jokes, with just the faintest edge. Artistically, his dreamy style is very much a continuation of where it was five years ago—an exploration in patient draftsmanship. But new is his toying with surrealist accents. One image depicts a golf-ball-headed player putting a ball with a man trapped inside.

“I wanted to turn it around,” Dixon said. “The player is always hitting the ball, but what if it were the other way?”

Dixon has hired two attorneys, Donald Thompson and Alan Rosenthal, to file simultaneous applications this fall. One is for a pardon, which is essentially a call to reexamine his conviction on the basis of new evidence. Despite the testimony of a few new witnesses (there’s never been a shortage of witnesses, as the killing of Torriano Jackson took place in a melee on the streets outside a popular nighttime hangout), a pardon “would be a heavy lift,” Thompson says. Part of the reason wrongful convictions surely outpace pardons is because a governor upending the work of so many state officials can be seen as politically hostile.

Dixon’s other, and more attainable, application is for clemency. “This is when the state says, ‘enough is enough.’ ” Rosenthal says. “To award clemency the state is really looking to see if there’s been transformation. Like so many youths from his area, Valentino admits he got mixed up in the wrong crowd, dealt drugs, but through his exemplary behavior, what he’s done with his art, how he’s helping younger inmates, there’s a strong case to be made that he’s a changed man.” To bolster his clemency bid, Dixon has a strong lineup of supporters, including past wardens and current correctional officers.

With such applications filed in the fall, the routine is for any announcements to be made around Christmas. Whether conflating the wish-granting power of the governor’s office with munificence of St. Nick is touching or macabre is a matter of perspective. What’s undebatable is that the odds of being awarded clemency are slim. Historically, in New York State there are less than three per year. Of the 77,000 inmates in the New York State Department of Corrections, that makes clemency roughly six times less likely than a hole-in-one.

But as every golfer who steps to the tee knows, there’s always a chance. Dixon’s daughter, who was an infant when he was sentenced, recently delivered twins. And the new grandfather is hoping to watch them grow up from the outside.

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