Dismissed caddie calls Aussie Allenby a ‘bully’
A day after Robert Allenby fired his caddie mid-round and had a school principal from Kingston, Ont., carry his bag the rest of the way, the dismissed caddie gave his side of the story.
Mick Middlemo told ESPN that there was never a disagreement about which club to use on the fourth hole, and that Allenby simply hit a poor shot into the water, after which he called the caddie a “fat (expletive)” loud enough that the gallery overheard.
Middlemo, an Australian like Allenby, said the player had crossed a line. Fox Sports Australia says this is the fourth time a caddie has walked off the course on Allenby.
“He likes to bully caddies,” Middlemo told Fox Sports. “You couldn’t get away with that in any workplace in the world, but somehow he thinks it’s appropriate on a golf course.”
Allenby told ScoreGolf on Thursday that his former caddie had threatened him after the confrontation, and the player withdrew from the RBC Canadian Open.
As the coup de grâce, Middlemo suggested that Allenby’s muchpublicized mugging in Hawaii might not have been as the player described, after all. In January, the player told police he had been beaten and robbed after a dinner out — the caddie was in attendance — but followup reports speculated that Allenby might have injured himself in a fall, possibly after drinking.
“I just wish it had never gone this far,” Middlemo told ESPN. “But again he is using the media to make himself look like the victim.”
On a day when several Canadians fired low rounds, Graham DeLaet had to withdraw after four holes with a thumb injury suffered on Thursday.
“I wanted to keep trying, but it was just kind of pointless,” said the man from Weyburn, Sask., whose face — and corporate sponsors — are on banners all over Glen Abbey.
The injury, a sprain or hyperextension of his left thumb, though there is no certain diagnosis yet, had DeLaet unable to control his ball. “I think I needed to shoot 3- or 4-under to make the cut today, and I felt like a 5-handicap, and that’s pretty hard for a 5-handicap to do,” he said.
David Hearn said he saw that DeLaet’s name wasn’t on the leaderboard anymore and “my heart went out to him. I know how much this tournament means to him.”
Adam Hadwin followed an opening 74 with a 67 that should allow him to play on the weekend, while two Canadian amateurs, Austin Connelly and Blair Hamilton, will also play on Saturday after rounds of 68 and 65, respectively, on Friday. Connelly, a Texan with dual citizenship (his father is from Nova Scotia), recently started playing under the Canadian flag on the national amateur team.
The warm, dry conditions have the greens at Glen Abbey rolling at 12 feet on the stimpmeter, which is right at their upper limit, course superintendent Andrew Gyba said on Friday. Any faster, he said, and they would be limited in the number of places they could place the pins.
Gyba also explained why the rough, which has been long at some Canadian Opens in recent years, is manageable for this edition of the event.
“It’s boring for the spectators,” he said of too-long rough. “It’s boring for the fans. You put a player 200 yards out into six-inch rough, he’s going to pitch to his yardage, he’s going to throw a dart into the pin, tap in for par and walk to the next hole, right?
“But if you can let that player see the ball, he’s going for it.”