Australian golfer Robert Allenby said Sunday he is thankful to have survived an ordeal in which he was apparently kidnapped from a bar in Hawaii and then robbed before being dumped in a park.
Allenby said he believed he may have been drugged before he was taken from a wine bar in Honolulu where he had been with friends on Friday night, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) said.
“I didn’t think I was going to survive this one,” Allenby told AAP, as pictures showed abrasions to his forehead and nose and his eye swollen.
“I was separated from my friend in the bar after we had paid the tab at 10:48pm and he went to the bathroom and next thing you know I’m being dumped in a park miles away,” he said.
“I only know this part because a homeless woman found me and told me she saw a few guys pull up and throw me out of the car. That is where I got the scrapes above my eye from the sidewalk.”
Having been robbed of his phone and wallet, Allenby was helped by the woman and then a retired man who was walking past the park, which lies about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the bar.
“He got me into a taxi and paid for me to get to my hotel and I called police from there. I have his details and will be getting back in touch with him for sure,” Allenby said.
Allenby’s caddie Mick Middlemo told the Golf Channel in the United States that the golfer was in a wine bar near Waikiki with him and another friend, but neither was with him when he was apparently abducted.
Middlemo told the Golf Channel that Allenby woke up groggy and with no memory of what had happened to him.
A photo posted on the channel’s Twitter feed showed the golfer’s face with lacerations to his forehead and nose.
The 43-year-old world number 271 had missed the cut at the US PGA Tour’s Sony Open on Friday and had planned to fly out of Hawaii on Saturday.
Scans have cleared him of any serious facial or head injuries but Allenby told AAP he was most worried that he couldn’t call his 13-year-old daughter for her birthday.
“She’s really upset about it but at the end of the day it could have been a lot worse,” he said.
“I don’t care about the money or my cards or anything like that. I am just glad I have survived this one.”