Jim Hill walks the practice green at Eagle Bend. Hill, who began taking golf seriously 15 years ago, has won two city titles and figures to contend for another at the LAGA Super Senior Open.

Jim Hill takes a putt on the practice green. Hill said putting was the weakest part of his game heading into the Lawrence Amateur Golf Association senior and super-senior opens. He practiced Tuesday at Eagle Bend.

Even though Jim Hill has been around the game of golf since he started caddying at the Lawrence Country Club as a child in the 1950s, he said he didn’t start taking it seriously until he turned 50.

Now, Hill, 65 and a resident of Ottawa, takes golf more seriously, enough so that he considers himself a serious contender in the super-senior division of this year’s Lawrence Amateur Golf Association City Open.

He has reason to be confident. Hill won the senior division (ages 50 and over) of the LAGA City Open in 2002 and the recently established super-senior division (ages 60 and over) in 2005.

Last year, Hill finished second among super seniors. He played all 36 holes of the two-day tournament with the eventual super-senior champion, Jim Hagan, who beat Hill by five strokes. Competition is nice, and that is what brings most golfers to the city open, but this year Hill is hoping to take back the title.

“It’s fun to just go out there and compete, and that’s why we do it,” he said. “I’m coming out to win the dang thing for sure.”

This year’s LAGA Senior and Super Senior City Open will be June 30 at Eagle Bend Golf Course and July 1 at Alvamar Golf Club. Hill spends some of his retirement time as a pro shop attendant at Eagle Bend and plays there more than anywhere else, but he said he didn’t expect to have a home-course advantage for the first round.

“You think it should be, but sometimes I shoot better at Alvamar than I have out here,” he said Tuesday at Eagle Bend. “Mentally, it should be, but physically, it doesn’t always work that way.”

Posting the best score won’t be easy, no matter how well or adversely his home course treats him.

“I’ll have to play good. I’ll have to shoot somewhere around even par out here at Eagle Bend,” he estimated, adding that he considers Alvamar Golf Club the tougher of the two courses to score on. “Five over is probably what it’ll take to win the super senior.”

Hill might not have ever dreamt of shooting five over par on 36 holes if he hadn’t decided to invest more time in his game about 15 years ago. Before that, he said, he was just out there hacking.

“I really didn’t learn how to play this game of golf until I was 50,” Hill said. “I was playing all those years, but I was just grippin’ it and rippin’ it and having some beers with the boys.”

It wasn’t hard for Hill to improve once he started to spend more time practicing. For whatever reason, he finally started applying all those golf tips he had heard through the years.

“Maybe I didn’t mature until I was 50; I’m not sure,” he joked. “I knew all the stuff because I’d heard it and been shown it all my life, but I just practiced it.”

After a few years of taking a disciplined approach, Hill started posting lower scores and learned to “play the game of golf the right way,” he said.

For Hill, the major difference in his game now is his scoring. He consistently shoots at or just above par.

“The biggest difference is just the consistency of your shots, your score and your confidence,” he said. “You’re not thinking, ‘Oh, God, I hope I don’t hit this out on the highway.'”

With confidence and consistency, Hill now considers himself a “steady” golfer.

“If I could putt, I’d be real dangerous,” he said of his biggest weakness. “I don’t practice putting much anymore because anything over 15 minutes and my back starts hurting.”

Back pain might be one of the downfalls of being a super senior, but it has its perks, too.

“When you get to be 65, you don’t have to play weekends. You can do the weekday three-hour round,” Hill explained, “instead of the weekend five-hour round.”

With the LAGA City Open looming, Hill said he wished every eligible golfer in his age bracket would play, even if that meant he probably wouldn’t win.

“There’s a lot of senior golfers in this town, maybe some super seniors, who are better than me that won’t play,” he said. Hill talked to some golfers in their 70s who didn’t plan on playing because there are no age divisions in the super senior format. He guessed others might not enter because they don’t want to pay the $100 entry fee when they already belong to a club.

In Hill’s personal Lawrence golf utopia, every golfer would play in the city open, and it would incorporate the holes on all the golf courses.

“I think a true city championship would use all 18-hole courses in town,” he said.

However, Hill realizes that’s an ideal situation and praised the LAGA for the work it has done with the city open.

“The LAGA crew has done a great job running this thing,” he said. “It’s getting better every year.”

Time will tell if Hill has a serious chance to be the top super senior this year.