A banana peel, golf gods? A banana peel? Is this Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is evading hapless detectives Foster (Joel Bailey) and McCabe (Art Kimbro) by placing a banana in their vehicle’s tailpipe?

It is not. It is the Australian Open and the people of Victoria have paid good money to see Rory McIlroy, and you throw a banana peel at him.

On Friday you gave the drawcard, the Grand Slam man, the Masters champion perhaps his first air-swing - an air-swing! - since one with a plastic club in his home in Holywood 34 years ago when he was two years old, chipping balls down the hall and into the family washing machine.

And, today, moving day, third round of this 108th Australian Open, on the second hole at the famous Royal Melbourne composite, you conjure for his ball to not only rest against a banana peel but to just about wrap ball in peel, and create a con-joined freak, a monster.

And, on top of that, you crazy, magnificent bastards, you nestle this banana-ball thing against the thick plumage of a pineapple bush, and ask McIlroy to have it. And it’s all the great man can do to extract his TaylorMade TP5x but 10 metres to the good.


What's next? Locusts? As songwriters Alan Jansson and Pauly Fuemana of Kiwi supergroup OMC says in their hit single from 1996, “How Bizarre”, how bizarre.

And so, onwards, the great McIlroy rolled from the incident they're not (yet) calling #bananagate and birdied the par-4 third.

Then he bogied seven when he took his medicine from the front right bunker, unlike playing partner James Morrison of England who took four shots to extract himself, and even the last one just nibbled over the lip, and he would write down a seven on the short, devilish, uphill par-3, and feel sad.

McIlroy, meanwhile, was outstanding from there. He hit a three-wood on a Tiger line to the very cool eighth hole. He birdied nine, birdied 12, birdied 14, should’ve birdied the par-4 15th after a ballsy drive found the front left fringe, birdied 17, birdied 18, and wrote down three-under 68 with a double because of a banana peel.

It could’ve been 65, even 63. There were putts that shaved lips, there were putts that rested on edges that may have fallen in if the golf gods sent wind from the west, as foreseen by the BOM.

McIlroy was sanguine about #bananagate post-round.

“I feel like this week's a week of firsts in a lot of ways. I mean, I shouldn't have been there in the first place, but yeah, it wasn't the best to start,” McIlroy said.

“But I feel like I played well after that. Sort of got a feel for it a little bit and especially I feel like I played the back nine well. Just need to figure out how to make a few more birdies on the front.”

James Morrison of England had four shots in the front bunker on the par-3 seventh at Royal Melbourne. PHOTO: Getty Images

He did play well. As he said, he just needed “something to go in”.

“I feel like I haven't really got a lot of momentum at all over the past three days and I guess when the putts hang on the lip like that, it just feels a bit like the story of the week in a way," McIlroy said.

“But maybe turned it around with the last few holes there coming in. All you need is that little bit of momentum to go your way then you're off and running."

Can he win? He surely cannot. Five-under for the tournament, nine behind the leader, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen of Denmark, with dozens of world class players between him and the Stonehaven Cup ... he’s more chance next year at his favourite course in Melbourne, Kingston Heath.

He'll stick have a crack, however. And it'll be entertaining and compelling viewing, because the man just is. 

"I'll go out there and try my best tomorrow and try to shoot a low one and see where it leaves me," he said.

Hopefully there'll be no locusts.