That is not to say she isn't capable because few sports demand the mental fortitude golf does. It's just that given a choice Owen knows where she wants to be. Her favourite subject, physical education, is a clear endorsement of what comes under the umbrella of her love of the outdoors.
"I'm good at school work but I don't enjoy it. I just get the work done," Owen says, her maturity extending to securing an American scholarship to play golf at Arkansas University, in Little Rock, next year.
Her golfing prowess came to the fore last Sunday when she carded 68 to smash the women's course record at Waipawa Golf Club.
2003 HGHS head girl Sheridan Graham, now living in Australia and a family friend of the Owens, was the previous record holder with 70. Graham also won an Arkansas Uni scholarship, carving a career in TV.
Owen credits Hasting PGA professional Brian Doyle for her sudden rise in golf in just six years of playing.
"He taught me lots," she says. "Everything."
When she first consulted Doyle she was on a 14 handicap.
"After the first lesson I went down to a nine handicap.
"He pretty much taught me everything I know."
It goes without saying Owen doesn't see Doyle often enough in her once-a-month visits, "if I'm lucky".
"I tend not to be too busy when I have a tournament because there's not enough time to change something."
Her first flirtation with golf came as an 8-year-old in England where her maternal grandparents, Thelma and Monty Burton, played golf at Hartley Witney in Hamsphire.
"They used to play and I walked around with them," says the youngster whose family lived in a village, Waltham St Lawrence, near Reading.
The grandparents bought her a set of golf clubs when Owen's parents, Jayne and Paul, decided to shift to Waipawa to be with friends.
Owen, who mucked around in the CHB backyard and garden with golf clubs, got her first golf lessons at Waipukurau Golf Club from Val and Denis White when she was 13.
She played her first tournament soon after and today she is a Hawke's Bay-Poverty Bay women's representative team member, coming in at No3 for the interprovincial tourney at Lochiel, Hamilton, from December 3-13.
Her long game is better and her putting has improved.
"I do try to work on my short game as much as I can," she says.
Doyle says she's a talented sportsperson who plays football at HGHS and is a former CHB Ross Shield rugby player.
"Golf seems to be her passion so she'll have to work particularly hard at it because there are so many out there wanting to do well.
"It's very early days but she's making all the right noises," says Doyle, mindful she'll have to keep her grades up in the US and something she's capable of doing.
