By Martin Blake

Justice Bosio is still a teenager, but you would never know it from watching her traverse the golf course.

Not even the fact that people mispronounce her name – it’s Boz-e-o – bothers her.

In fact, not much does.

“I think golf teaches you a lot of patience,” the 19-year-old Queenslander said. “I would like to say that I try to be as patient as I can on and off the golf course. I’ve always been very mature for my age, and that’s definitely come from golf. You need to be a very mature person to play golf. Especially if you are reasonably good, you end up playing with a lot of people who are older than you. Patience and maturity is how golf shapes me.”

Bosio hails from Caboolture Golf Club in the northern suburbs of Brisbane, and lives near the club. Not that she is at home that much.

She has been on the road more often than not over this summer, with various appearances in the mixed Webex Players Series run by the WPGA Tour and the ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia, as well as the Australian Amateur in Sydney, where she was runner-up for the second year in a row.

This week it’s The Athena in Melbourne, next week it’s the Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific Championship in Singapore representing Australia, and soon enough it will be the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, where she received a precious invitation to play.

That makes her one of the best amateurs in the world, and one of the brightest prospects that Australian golf has seen in quite a while.

Bosio was born in Alice Springs, and remembers her tennis coach and golf-loving father Luke (current handicap 4) introducing her to the game. “I do remember learning with the plastic clubs, and my first memory would be of going to the golf course with Dad every Sunday,” she said.

“I think I always did love golf. My parents have told me that when I was younger, every time they turned golf on the television if I was crying, I’d stop crying. Which is really weird … I think I was always drawn to it. Growing up playing the game, I gained more and more love for it.”

The family moved to Darwin when Bosio was three years old, and then to Queensland where they have lived ever since. Luke Bosio has Italian and Egyptian heritage through his parents, but Justice remembers a very Australian upbringing. She loves the beach, and reading, and hanging out with friends and family.

But of course, that upbringing included plenty of golf. At 10, she joined Caboolture Golf Club and received her first handicap … which was 27. At 12 or 13 years of age, “one of the two”, she shot her first even-par round.

In 2020 she became the first-ever female winner of the Keperra Bowl and broke into the High Performance programs of Golf Australia.

“I would say that I’m a pretty calm golfer,” she said. “I just kind of plot my way around the golf course. My strength? I’m pretty accurate, I’d say. I hit a lot of fairways and a lot of greens. Sometimes they’re not so close and the scores are not as good, but accuracy is a strong point.

“I’m trying to gain distance at the moment. That’s my main objective at the moment, getting up above average or to average on the LPGA (Tour).”

Not that it has been all smooth sailing for her. When she began playing competitive golf at Keperra, she suffered her worst embarrassment on a course.

“I grew up playing six holes and then nine holes and moved into 18 holes on a tour near my house in the Glasshouse Mountains Junior Tour,” she said. “They have a rule that if you had a 10, you picked up your golf ball. So I got my handicap and I played a round at Caboolture Golf Club, for the very first time. I played 18 holes with a group of ladies, one was my next door neighbour actually. It was the fifth hole, I think, I had 10 shots and I hadn’t got the green yet, and I just picked up my ball.

“I didn’t think you were allowed more than 10 shots! The lady I was playing with said: ‘What are you doing?’ And I said: ‘I’ve had 10 shots’. And she said: ‘You have to keep going until you get it in the hole’. That was the most embarrassing moment on the golf course for me.”

Bosio’s invitation to play at Augusta National, home of the world famous Masters tournament, came in the mail recently when she was playing in at TPS event, and it makes her one of less than a handful of Australians to have had a chance to play that event. The family is already planning the trip to the US, which includes a stopover in Los Angeles for some spectating and basketball and hockey games.

“I think anyone would be nervous going to literally the best place for any golfer in the world,” she said.

But if the butterflies are too prevalent, she can always call upon the great Karrie Webb for advice. Webb is already somewhat of a mentor for her; they played together for two rounds at the TPS Victorian event at Rosebud, where Bosio finished tied-ninth, a few places ahead of Australia’s seven-time major winner. “That was a really cool experience,” said Bosio. “She’s obviously a trailblazer for women’s golf, and she’s done so much in the game. Everyone would love to be like her.”

This week’s all-female event at Sandy Links in Melbourne is her second appearance in The Athena. “I love it,” she said. “I played the inaugural one (2020) and I was incredibly nervous. It was my first time getting on TV. So I’m really excited to play this week. It’s a great concept and it’s a lot of fun for the people involved and for the people at home as well watching on TV.”