Robert Allenby’s fired, former caddy now says he doesn’t believe the professional golfer was mugged in Honolulu in January.
Allenby posted a photo of his bruised face on Facebook and said he he had been drugged, kidnapped, robbed of his credit cards, thrown into a car trunk and dumped 6.5 miles away in a park on Jan. 16 following a night of drinking after missing the cut at the Sony Open.
“I don’t know what they hit me with between the eyeballs, whether a fist or a baseball bat,” the Australian golfer said then. “Whatever it was, it hurts.”
Allenby returned to play in the PGA tour in Phoenix later in January, saying he had “no memory” of what happened for over two hours that night in Hawaii.
Allenby said he was mugged after having dinner and wine at the Amuse wine bar on Kapiolani Boulevard with his caddy and a friend.
But in an interview with Australian radio earlier this week, Mick Middlemo, Allenby’s former caddy, disputed the golfer’s story.
“Do I think he got mugged and bashed and absolutely robbed? No, I don’t,” Middlemo said. “That’s the story I told because that’s the story he told me to tell, because I wasn’t there.”
Middlemo said he protected Allenby “to the hilt” but is no longer doing so.
“Do I think he fell over and cracked his head? Honestly, I do. … I think he fell over and someone picked up his wallet and had a great time with his credit card.”
However, a friend of Allenby’s who was also at the Amuse bar said Middlemo is the one lying.
“It’s a disgrace that everybody is taking as gospel the words of a man who had left the bar at least an hour before Robert was assaulted, so the fact he has anything to say about it is unbelievable,” Anthony Puntoriero told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“The pure fact is there is a full police report, there has been an arrest and someone is in jail for what took place that night,” he said. “He is offering opinion like it is fact, which it clearly is not.”
Allenby fired Middlemo in the middle of the first round of last week’s RBC Canadian Open, and a fan carried his bag for the rest of the round.
Canadian golf outlet Score Golf reported that Allenby and Middlemo got into a heated exchange at the 13th hole, and at the 18th the caddie left the course.
Last month, Owen Patrick Harbison of Salt Lake, accused of using Allenby’s credit card to buy nearly $20,000 worth of clothes, liquor and candy, pleaded guilty to identity theft and unauthorized possession of confidential personal information. He was not charged with robbery or kidnapping.
He is scheduled to be sentenced next month after agreeing to a five-year term in a plea agreement.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
