Robert Allenby speaks to the media after his alleged ordeal. Photo / Channel 10
Robert Allenby speaks to the media after his alleged ordeal. Photo / Channel 10
The caddie fired mid-round by Robert Allenby last week claims the Australian made up the kidnapping story that made headlines earlier in the year.
In January, Allenby claimed he was kidnapped, robbed and beaten in Honolulu after missing the cut at the Sony Open.
Allenby sacked caddie Mick Middlemo during the opening round of the Canadian Open, using a spectator to carry his bag for the rest of the round.
Mick Middlemo and Robert Allenby in happier times. Photo / Getty Images
Middlemo has since opened up about his time working with Allenby, telling the Sydney Daily Telegraph he "protected Allenby to the hilt" when the kidnapping story broke.
Allenby kept saying after the incident that the truth about his bashing would come out, Middlemo claimed. "I kept thinking no it's not, because you probably just fell over sh**-faced drunk," he said. "You didn't have enough to eat, you had a few wines, you fell over."
He added: "Do I think he got mugged and bashed and absolutely robbed? No I don't. That's the story I told because that's the story he told me to tell because I wasn't there."
Middlemo claimed his former boss treated people around him poorly and compared his behaviour to much-criticised Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic. "He's in the same class as Bernard Tomic. I'd absolutely put him in the same class,' Middlemo told The Daily Telegraph. "The way he talks to people on the golf course is mind-boggling. To marshals, volunteers.
Allenby allegedly called Middlemo a "fat c***" and threatened to have him "banned for life" from the PGA Tour, according to Fox Sports Australia. But Allenby claimed the pair disputed over club selection on the approach shot, which found the creek in front of the green before
Although a man pleaded guilty to using Allenby's credit cards in Hawaii but no one was ever charged with assault.
At the time, Allenby recounted a bizarre saga that involved having no memory of what happened for 2 1/2 hours after he left a Honolulu restaurant.
"I was kidnapped" - Allenby appears bruised an battered.
He said he was at Amuse Wine Bar with his caddie and a friend from Australia on the night he missed the cut at the Sony Open. Surveillance tape shows him leaving the bar with three people he doesn't recognise, and his next memory is being in a park. He said a homeless woman told him he had been thrown out of a car boot, which he said caused his injuries.
"There has definitely been a lot of confusion," Allenby said at the time. "But I think the No 1 thing that you should all remember is that my story stays exactly the same as the way I told it. I told you what I knew, and I told you what someone told me. That's the bottom line. I never lied to anyone."
After the incident the Honolulu Star-Advertiser quoted the homeless woman, Charade Keane, as saying she never told Allenby she saw him in a trunk and did not know he was injured. The newspaper quoted another homeless man in the park, Chris Khamis, as saying Allenby told him he was depressed and drugged at a strip club and that he passed out and hit his head on a lava rock.
Middlemo said that at the time of the Hawaii incident, he told media precisely what Allenby told him to say. He now believes Allenby drank too much, fell over and smashed his own face after the group drank wine and tequila shots
Allenby said he was not drunk. "There's no way in the world what I drank could do what was done to me - not a chance in the world," he said. He also said he had blood tests to see if anything was detected in his system. Doctors chose not to do a drug test the day after the incident because whatever was in his system likely would not be there for more than a few hours.
