Sometimes a round of golf is easy. It is smooth sailing and effortless. Drives go down the middle, approach shots find the green and you don’t leave yourself with many difficult, knee-knocking putts.

Thats kind of how it was for a good chunk of my Sunday. There were a bunch of fairways hit, a bunch of GIRs and a scorecard filled primarily with pars.

And then the wheels fell off. On the 12th hole, I hit a find 3-wood off of the tee, but hit a crappy layup shot on the par 5. The good news was that I still had a decent shot at the green and thought I took advantage. It was an 8-iron out of the left rough that ended up about four feet for birdie.

Life was good.

But then I misread the putt or made a bad stroke at the ball. I’m not sure which and it is certainly possible that it was a little bit of both. Whatever the action, the reaction was a putt that didn’t come remotely close to finding the bottom of the hole. And while I’m not one who generally bitches about making par — I’m sure as hell not good enough to do that — this was a big missed opportunity.

I don’t have nearly the temper I did when I was a kid — yes, I once got my Wilson R-90 sand wedge with the brown metal shaft stuck up in a tree to the left of the old No. 6 green at Willmar GC — but there might have been a bit of smoke coming out of my ears as I walked to the No. 13 tee. I was bummed at the missed opportunity. If I’m going to finish this golf season with more birdies than doubles, I need to take advantage of the easy ones.

And 4 feet for birdie is an easy one.

So what happens? Yep, that bit of fire turned into a bit too aggressive swing. What happens then? I hook the tee ball. It hits the back side of the left fairway bunker and kicks straight into the lateral hazard. Not only do I have to take a drop, but the hole doesn’t allow me have a shot at the green from where I crossed the hazard line.

The play-by-play would read like this: Hook, drop, punch, wedge, putt, putt. Add it up and you get a bad double (not that there is such a thing as a good double).

All of that gets us to the updated totals after Round 11:

April totals: 10 birdies, 5 doubles. (108 holes)
Season totals: 13 birdies, 11 doubles (159 holes).

There will be no more golf until an after work sprint to play as many holes as possible on Thursday night. I’m working on tonight (Tuesday), have to cover the Timberwolves finale on Wednesday night. I’m going to the Twins on Friday night and covering on Saturday. I will be back on Sunday for another 18.