The unlikely culprit behind Rory McIlroy’s Australian demise? A banana.

You don’t have to spend long in the Australian sand belt to learn about the variety of exotic objects that could lead to your eventual demise.

On a local golf course, Kingswood Peninsulathe staff enjoy scaring foreign visitors with a reminder: three of the world’s deadliest snakes live in the Melbourne region, and all three have been spotted on the golf course. Players are encouraged to enter the rugged terrain by slamming their 9-iron into the ground and alerting potential attackers to their whereabouts. The line at Peninsula Kingswood and the rest of the spectacular golf courses elsewhere in Oz is clear: expect the unexpected.

This was a lesson Rory McIlroy learned the hard way on Saturday morning at the Australian Open. McIlroy, as you may have heard, is making his big debut at the Sandbelt at Royal Melbourne, the venue for this week’s event (and GOLF’s No. 7 course in the world).

The reigning Masters champion is impressed by the golf culture in Oz, by the hair-raising creativity required to play golf on the jagged edges of the sand belt, and by golf’s unique shot variety. He’s also apparently impressed by the strange stew of unusual items that can derail a round of golf on the sand belt. Like a banana peel, for example.

On the second hole Saturday morning at Royal Melbourne, McIlroy missed his drive far right of the fairway. So much for rightIn fact, his ball ended up in a big pile of tall grass. And rest in the tall grass, right next to his golf ball? Well, the kind of opponent that might only arrive in Oz: a banana peel.

After a lengthy conversation with his caddy, Harry Diamond, and a brief consideration of the value of a drop, McIlroy opted for a pitch-out. But when he swung at this ball, he only managed to make half a connection. He struck out again on his third shot and needed three more strokes to land his ball in the hole. He walked away from the second with a double-bogey 6, his worst hole of the week.

“I know, it was a bit of a double whammy,” McIlroy said later. “It was in that little tuft of long grass and then the banana peel over it, but I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, it was a terrible tee shot.”