“‘Hey if you need someone to carry, I’ll carry,” said Fraser.

Allenby said sure.

So Fraser ducked under the ropes, picked up the player’s bag — “A little bit heaver than mine. I figured out the double-strap with two holes to go,” Fraser said — and got his first taste of inside-the-ropes action.

“I just said, ‘Hey Robert, just tell me what to do, where to stand,’ and he was really good about it and the other caddies (for Jon Curran and S.J. Park) were helpful about where to place the bag and where to stand and how to stay out of the sightlines and stuff like that.”

Allenby promptly birdied the first hole with Fraser at his side, but bogeyed four holes in a row from Nos. 4 through 7 and signed for an 81. He said he was going to withdraw from the tournament.

“My nerves have been rattled. I’m in shock,” he said. “Everything that’s gone on this year, that was the last thing I needed. I’ve been obviously beaten up, robbed and stolen from, what have you in Hawaii and all that. I haven’t dealt with it well all year, it’s been tough, and then I got something like this. He’s meant to be one of my mates. I’ve done a lot of right things by him and helped him out financially and he just turns around and does this to me.

“This is the worst incident I’ve ever witnessed as a player,” the veteran continued. “I’ve never been threatened and as he walked away he said, ‘I’ll be waiting for you in the car park.’

“He’s an Australian and he didn’t act like an Australian, let’s put it that way.”

Allenby said he would be asking tournament officials for a security escort out of the golf course. Middlemo couldn’t be tracked down for comment, but later told SEN Australian radio that Allenby called him a “fat so and so” repeatedly.

“I got a little big peeved by it and then the third time he said it I walked up to him and basically said, ‘I dare you to stay that to me again,” Middlemo told SEN. “He didn’t say it again. There was never going to be any violence . . . I was just going to put the bag down, get my gear and leave.

“I basically said on the 13th hole, ‘You don’t have to worry about it because I won’t be here tomorrow,’ and he said, ‘You’re right, because I definitely won’t have you back.”

Fans who witnessed the incident said Allenby was equally as aggressive towards his now ex-caddie.

As for his substitute loop, Allenby couldn’t have heaped more praise upon him.

“He did a great job. He did everything he was told. He was a nice guy. I’m really thankful that he helped me out,” he said of Fraser, who snapped a picture with his player upon finishing up. “It was nice to have someone friendly on the bag who didn’t want to threaten me.”

Told Fraser is an educator who will have a nice what-did-you-do-this-summer story to tell his students upon returning in September, Allenby cracked: “Let’s put it this way, if it was the other way around he’d be giving my caddie the strap.”