No More Mr. Nice Guy: Ladin to Become Offensive : Senior golf: Defending champion, now two shots off the lead, vows to go for broke after shooting 75 in cautious round.

What is this, football? Hockey? Maybe whatever passes for pro basketball these days?

Paul Ladin of Westlake Village had just finished the second round of the State Senior Amateur Championship when he began tossing around words like aggressive and attack , terms not typically associated with the genteel game of golf.

In short, Ladin said he played defensively and promised it wouldn’t happen again. Today, he attacks--even if he dies trying.

“(Friday) I either shoot 68 or 86,” Ladin said. “I’m cutting every corner. I’m going for it.”

He doesn’t have far to go. Ladin, the defending State Senior champion, fired a three-over-par 75 at Poppy Hills Golf Course on Thursday to remain two shots off the lead with one round to go in the 54-hole stroke-play event.

Ladin is tied for fifth with four others at 148. First-round leader James McMurtrey of Danville, a semifinalist in the 1993 U.S. Senior Amateur, shot 75 to retain the top spot at 146.

Ladin tees off in the second-to-last foursome today at 7:50 a.m.

Chuck Wagner of Camarillo and Jerome Chirpich of Granada Hills also made the 36-hole cut. The 70-man field was trimmed to the low 24, plus ties.

Ladin, one of the longer hitters in the field, failed to gain ground on any of Poppy Hills’ four par-fives. In fact, he didn’t even make par, finishing with a birdie and three bogeys. He three-putted the par-five 18th from 18 feet for bogey, to boot.

“Definite birdie holes too,” he said.

He accomplished his primary goal, though. Ladin, 61, is well within range to defend his title.

“I just wanted to stay close in case something happens,” Ladin said. “These are amateurs, not professionals. Sometimes they whack a few into the woods, and if somebody’s breathing down their neck, they can lose one or two strokes pretty fast.”

Wagner and Chirpich, who each finished at 155, rallied considerably to make the cut. Wagner, 60, fired a second-round 75 and Chirpich, 57, shot 74. Both made it by a whisker, finishing in a five-way tie for 24th place.

Jim Patterson of Camarillo wasn’t as fortunate. Patterson shot 76 in the first round, but when he missed a four-footer to double-bogey the 18th Thursday, he dropped his putter in disgust and disbelief.

Perhaps he had a premonition. He finished with an 80 and missed the cut by one shot at 156.

“It blew me right out of it,” said Patterson, who also bogeyed No. 17.

Will the leaders blow up today? Ladin predicted that a round of 70 or 71 would again bring him a victory.

“When you’re in the lead and the pressure’s on, you think differently,” he said of the leaders. “You start to think, ‘Don’t hit it here,’ or ‘Don’t hit it there.’

“You don’t play the way that got you there in the first place.”

A mistake he won’t make again.