Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Allenby, The Presser

I'm still completely disillusioned over the best story of 2015, as the police confirming that our hero was not at La Femme Nu on that Friday night undermines the entire narrative.... what's a lonely blogger to cling to in this crazy, mixed-up world?

Doug Ferguson provides some of the highlights from the Tuesday presser, most importantly his strategy for the coming week:
''I've got so many great memories here that I wasn't going to let one bad one interrupt it,''
he said Sunday night after checking into the Kahala Hotel at Waialae Country Club. ''I also thought for my own well-being that maybe I could come here and face it and put some closure on what happened last year.'' 
He had dinner at the hotel with friends and already has his dining plans laid out for the week. 
''Room service and (hotel) restaurant,'' he said.
Fair enough, but I assume he's still take that drink to the men's room with him, just to be safe.  I started with this piece because of its succinct summary of the man's career:
Through it all, his reputation didn't help. 
He is renowned for a fierce temper on the golf course. Allenby once claimed Anthony Kim was out all night before the final day of the Presidents Cup - after Kim had beaten him badly in singles. He mixed it up with Geoff Ogilvy over who was to blame for a team loss in the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne two years later. And he has gone through more than a dozen caddies.
How do you mix it up with Geoff Ogilvy?   Is there a nicer or more easy-going guy than that?

John Strege had this from Allenby's comments:
“There’s been a lot of thoughts about it over the last year. A lot of good things, a lot negative things about this. There has been more negative than anything. That really was the whole piece to the puzzle of coming here is to dilute all the negative stuff. Hawaii is such a beautiful place. I didn’t want people to think I wasn’t going to come back here because of what happened. I enjoy being here. The weather is perfect. The golf course is always perfect. People here are always so awesome and so friendly. Sony is a great sponsor. Why not support a great tournament?
I think that was the bit that caused Shack to refer to him as the Rosa Parks of the PGA Tour...yanno, it's a "We shall overcome" moment.  And of course it's completely self-absorbed, as the last thing the locals and Sony want is for us all to be rehashing this incident.  

This seems to be about all that we know for sure:
A month after the incident, police arrested a Hawaii man for using Allenby's credit cards. Owen Harbison was sentenced in August to five years.
Assuming the police are correct, then we're left with Allenby being over-served at the Amuse Wine Bar and collapsing as the most logical scenario... but how about this for irony?
Whatever happened that night - Allenby says he still doesn't remember anything during a 2 1/2-hour window - it might have gone unnoticed except that Allenby posted a photo his private Facebook page of a bloody scrape on his head and a swollen eye.
And lest you feel sorry for the man, he comes out with this:
“I lost a lot of confidence in my myself from last year with what happened here. I didn’t want to be out in public but I had to be because I had to do my job. The media definitely humiliated me and it was a very hard thing to overcome. 
“My life itself probably hasn’t changed but maybe my reputation has changed. It’s been tarnished though false reporting.”
OK, maybe the Golf Channel report is fair to criticize, but for the rest he can just look in the mirror. 

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