Golf’s rule book is there to protect players, even if Rory McIlroy might feel victimised by the harshness of the two stroke penalty which – essentially – was the difference between him winning and losing the Abu Dhabi championship. In Saturday’s third round, he fell foul of Rule 25/1 for inadvertently taking a stance on the temporary white line indicating ground under repair after a free drop when his tee shot finished on a spectator walkway on the second hole.

It seems strange that neither McIlroy nor his caddie JP Fitzgerald noticed the infraction. And it also seems strange that veteran Scottish caddie Dave Renwick, who was carrying the bag of Ricardo Gonzalez, didn't call out to the player when he noticed McIlroy's foot was on the line. Instead, Renwick waited until after the round to inform McIlroy of what he had seen. At least that information was passed on before McIlroy signed his card, which resulted in the two shot penalty rather than a disqualification.

The irony is McIlroy wasn’t required to take relief from the spectator crossway. It is not mandatory to do so, and the player has the option to play from ground under repair. However, once the decision was taken to avail of the free drop, you must take the nearest point of relief and one club length. If you are still standing in the GUR after the drop takes place, you must drop again. A player’s ball is in play after he has dropped and there is no interference from the ground under repair.

McIlroy lamented that he had actually dropped the ball into a poor lie. In actual fact, he was entitled to take another drop if he’d known that his foot was touching the ground under repair line.

But, when he played his shot, his left foot was just on the line or over it. Nit-picking, to be sure. But the rule states that you take full relief. In other words, you can’t be partially in the area from which you are taking the drop. If a player elects to take relief from a cart path, for example, he is not allowed to stand on the path, not even partially.

This might be a dumb rule, but McIlroy should know better, and so should his caddie, JP Fitzgerald. Perhaps he was so close to the line, the events occurring so quickly, that they missed it.

But another caddie in the group spotted the violation; he waited until after the round to tell McIlroy, so as not to distract him but also in time to make sure he could review the situation before signing his scorecard.

After being hit by the two shot penalty on Saturday, McIlroy remarked: “There are a lot of stupid rules in golf and this is one of them.”

Stupid or not, the rule is one every professional on tour should know. It has been around for a longtime. But the real sign of McIlroy’s maturity following this latest brush with the rule book was that he was able to put it behind him to challenge strongly in the final round for what he felt amounted to a “moral victory.”