Robert Allenby – the plot thickens

Report suggests Australian spent 'thousands' in Honolulu strip-club

Robert Allenby in action at the Sony Open
Robert Allenby in action at the Sony Open
(Image credit: Getty Images)

GolfChannel.com report suggests Australian golfer spent "thousands" in Honolulu strip-club

So just what did happen to Robert Allenby that night in Hawaii? There seems to be quite a bit of confusion and some conflicting stories.

In his original account of what happened on January 16th, the night after he’d missed the cut at the Sony Open, the 47-year-old Australian said he went for dinner in a wine bar in Honolulu with his caddy before being robbed, beaten and kidnapped – thrown in the boot of a car and driven six miles to a park where he was dumped and rescued by a homeless woman.

It sounded like quite an ordeal and one that Allenby was lucky to escape from alive. But a number of eyewitnesses interviewed by GolfChannel.com have given a slightly different version of events.

The GolfChannel report gave a rough time-line of the night of the 16th that suggest Allenby was approached by two men and a woman at “Amuse Wine Bar” in Honolulu and video footage suggests he left the restaurant with them just after 11pm.

Two homeless men Chris Khamis and Toa Kaili, say they then found Allenby, unconscious but uninjured on the pavement some 20 minutes later.

Allenby was then seen at a strip-club about a mile from the restaurant he had been in where (according to the Golf Channel report) he and “friends” racked up a $3,400 bill.

Then, at about 1am, Allenby was back on the pavement where Khamis and Kaili had first seen him. This time he was “beyond drunk,” according to Kaili. “Totally blitz.”

Khamis and Kaili claim they watched Allenby stumble, fall and injure himself by hitting his head on a rock.

Allenby maintains that he was assaulted and says there is a 2.5-hour period of which he has no memory.

He is due to give a press conference later today at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Maybe that will shed some more light on things.

Fergus Bisset
Contributing Editor

Fergus is Golf Monthly's resident expert on the history of the game and has written extensively on that subject. He is a golf obsessive and 1-handicapper. Growing up in the North East of Scotland, golf runs through his veins and his passion for the sport was bolstered during his time at St Andrews university studying history. He went on to earn a post graduate diploma from the London School of Journalism. Fergus has worked for Golf Monthly since 2004 and has written two books on the game; "Great Golf Debates" together with Jezz Ellwood of Golf Monthly and the history section of "The Ultimate Golf Book" together with Neil Tappin , also of Golf Monthly. 

Fergus once shanked a ball from just over Granny Clark's Wynd on the 18th of the Old Course that struck the St Andrews Golf Club and rebounded into the Valley of Sin, from where he saved par. Who says there's no golfing god?