Robert Allenby’s incredible story of being beaten, kidnapped and robbed continues to fall apart more than a week after his caddie originally told the tale to the Golf Channel.
Turns out the 43-year-old Australian golfer was not kidnapped but instead spent much of that night in a strip club, where he ran up a $3,400 bar tab with “a group of friends,” according to a Golf Channel report that cites “multiple sources who were working at the club on Jan. 16.”
Allenby was passed out nearby when he was found by two homeless men, one of whom told the Golf Channel that the golfer not only had a busted up face but “he was beyond drunk. Totally blitz. It had to be a little bit more than just drunk.”
Earlier that night, Allenby was at a Honolulu wine bar with his caddie, Mick Middlemo, and another friend after missing the cut at the Sony Open earlier that day. Surveillance video has shown that three unknown individuals started talking to Allenby and that he left with them shortly afterward.
Middlemo said Allenby didn’t show signs of intoxication until after the three newcomers appeared on the scene.
“I have no doubt someone slipped something into his drink,” Middlemo said of Allenby, who estimates he had three glasses of wine at that bar.
Allenby echoed the sentiment. “You can’t go from being perfect to being in the position I was in,” he said.
Allenby did not return a message from the Golf Channel about the strip club development but said late last week that there’s a 2.5-hour gap in his memory from that night. He also said that much of what he told police and the Golf Channel about that night was what he was told by a homeless woman he says helped him.
“I remember someone hitting me twice, I just don’t know who that person is, but I remember it. I keep having nightmares about it,” Allenby said. “Everything else came from someone else.”
Sources close to the case told the Golf Channel the injuries Allenby sustained are not congruent with an assault. Honolulu police said Tuesday that it is continuing to investigate the case for second-degree robbery and fraudulent use of a credit card, but not a possible kidnapping or assault.
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