Why Rory McIlroy couldn’t take relief from banana-peel nightmare

Whether you’re a Mario Kart driver or the O’Doyles in Billy Madison, you’ve learned the hard way: banana peels are bad news.

But they’re not often an obstacle in professional golf.

So when Rory McIlroy’s ball settled in a tuft of high grass during Saturday’s third round in the Australian Open at the vaunted, delightful Royal Melbourne, it seemed particularly unfair that his ball had also settled inside a banana peel.

“I know, it was sort of a double-whammy,” McIlroy said in his post-round interview. “It was in that little tuft of long grass and then the banana-skin 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 take relief?

He was asked about the possibility post-round and said he hadn’t even bothered to call for a rules official.

“No, because I assumed I wouldn’t,” McIlroy said. “The banana, it’s a loose impediment and it was rested on the ball. So if I moved the banana peel the ball would’ve moved. I just didn’t even try.”

Here’s where things get interesting. The USGA defines “loose impediments” as “unattached natural objects” and uses examples of leaves, twigs or blades of grass. Golf fans are used to watching players surgically remove sticks from around their golf ball because if you move a loose impediment and your ball moves as a result, that’s a one-stroke penalty. (More in Rule 15 if you’re into that sort of thing.

There’s an adjacent rule, though, that would have given McIlroy more leeway. “Movable obstructions” can be moved anywhere, anytime, and if your ball moves in the process, no worries — you can replace it without penalty.

Movable obstructions 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 in the USGA’s list of definitions and you’ll find a couple 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).

Anyway, it is my understanding, and that of an Aussie rules expert — plus, apparently, McIlroy’s — that a banana peel is a natural rather than artificial object. That makes it a loose impediment rather than a movable obstruction. That means he couldn’t move it without risk of penalty. And that means McIlroy played his next shot without much success at all, sending the banana remnants flying en route to double bogey.

A no-good banana split.

McIlroy bounced back admirably from his second-hole struggles; he birdied No. 3 and added birdies on five of his final 10 holes to post three-under 68. That leaves him T24, nine shots off the third-round lead of Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen.

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