Whether you’re a Mario Kart driver or a member of the O’Doyle family, billy madisonyou learned the hard way that banana peels are bad news.
However, in professional golf, these are rarely obstacles.
So when Rory McIlroy’s ball landed in a tuft of high grass in the third round of the Australian Open at the vaunted and fun Royal Melbourne on Saturday, it seemed particularly unfair that his ball fell. Also It fit inside a banana peel.
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“I know, but it was kind of a double whammy,” McIlroy said in a post-round interview. “It was in a little tuft of long grass, covered with a banana peel on top of it. But I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It was a terrible tee shot.”
The Peel issue raises an interesting question: Why didn’t McIlroy get relief?
Asked about that possibility after the round, he said he didn’t even want to call the rules guy.
“No, because I thought I wouldn’t do it,” McIlroy said. “The banana, it was a loose impediment, and it was sitting on top of the ball. So if I had moved the banana peel, the ball would have moved. I didn’t even try to do that.”
Here’s where things get interesting. The USGA defines “loose impediments” as “unattached natural objects” and uses examples of leaves, twigs, and blades of grass. Golf fans are used to seeing players surgically remove the sticks around their golf balls. This is because if you move a loose impediment and the ball moves as a result, it is a one-stroke penalty. (See Rule 15 if you’re interested in such things.
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But there are adjacent rules that would have given McIlroy more leeway. The “movable obstacles” can be moved anytime and anywhere, and there is no need to worry if the ball moves on the way. You can restore it without penalty.
A movable obstacle is defined as “a man-made object that can be moved with reasonable effort, such as a water bottle, scorecard, broken tee, trash can, or bench.”
So, is a banana peel more like a stick or a water bottle?
If you dig a little deeper into the USGA’s list of definitions, you’ll find several other examples of natural objects, including animal waste (white spots, no relief from goose droppings), dead animals (double bleach, no relief from dead geese), snow (not particularly relevant but interesting), and spider webs (ditto).
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Anyway, the banana peel nature than that artificial object. Therefore, it becomes a loose obstacle rather than a moving obstacle. That meant it could not be moved without risking a penalty. That meant that McIlroy’s next shot didn’t quite hit the mark, and the remains of the banana went flying in the middle, resulting in a double bogey.
Bad banana split.
McIlroy bounced back nicely from a difficult second hole. He birdied No. 3 and added birdies on five of his final 10 holes for a 3-under 68. This puts him in 24th place overall, nine strokes behind third-round leader Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen of Denmark.
McIlroy himself said he was unlikely to win. But he can leave Australia knowing he’s joined this year’s catalog of truly bizarre golf shots…
Let’s start with a word from Friday…
And Saturday’s slippery conditions.
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We can only guess what Sunday will bring.
The post Why Rory McIlroy Wasn’t Freed From His Banana Peel Nightmare appeared first on Golf.
