Whether you are a Mario Kart Director or the O’Doyles in BillyMadisonyou learned it the hard way: banana peels are bad news.
But they are not often an obstacle in professional golf.
So when Rory McIlroy’s ball landed in a tuft of tall grass during Saturday’s third round of the Australian Open at the vaunted, beautiful Royal Melbourne, it seemed particularly unfair that his ball Also nestled in a banana peel.
“I know, it was kind of a double whammy,” McIlroy said in his post-round interview. “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.”
The peel problem raised an interesting question: Why couldn’t McIlroy provide relief?
He was asked about the possibility after the round and he said he didn’t even bother calling a rules official.
“No, because I assumed I wouldn’t,” McIlroy said. “The banana is a loose object and it was on the ball. So if I had moved the banana peel, the ball would have moved. I just didn’t even try.”
However, there is an adjacent rule that would have given McIlroy more leeway. “Movable Obstacles” can be moved anywhere, anytime, and if your ball moves while doing so, don’t worry: you can replace it without penalty.
Movable obstacles are defined as “artificial objects that can be moved with reasonable effort, such as a water bottle, scorecard, broken tee, trash can, bench, etc.”
So is a banana peel closer to a stick – or a water bottle?
Dig a little deeper into the USGAs list of definitions and you’ll find a few other examples of natural objects, like animal waste (blech, no relief from goose poop), dead animals (double blech, no relief from dead goose), snow (not particularly related, but interesting), and spider webs (ditto).
In any case, it is my view, and that of an expert on Australian rules – plus apparently McIlroy’s – that a banana peel is a Naturally instead of artificial object. This makes it a loose obstacle rather than a movable obstacle. That means he couldn’t move it without risking a fine. And that means McIlroy played his next shot without much success, sending the banana scraps flying towards a double bogey.
A bad banana split.
McIlroy recovered admirably from his struggles in the second hole; he birdied No. 3 and added birdies on five of his last ten holes to score a three-under 68. That leaves him T24, nine shots off Dane Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen’s third-round lead.
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