For a time golf was a tall order for Anthony Owens — literally.

At 6-foot-6 his height is a major asset as a member of the Winthrop High School boys basketball team, but when it comes to golf it can be both a blessing and a curse. A longer swing means greater distance, but it can also be more difficult to control — particularly if you have never really stopped growing, like Owens.

“I had a lot of trouble with that,” Owens said. “There’s more room for error when you’re taller and you can feel it when you swing more. It’s just really difficult and I struggled with that a lot growing up through high school.”

Undeterred, Owens worked to improve his swing. He began taking lessons with Rawn Torrington at T’s Golf in Manchester a couple of years ago and this past summer he was there one or two times per week to work on his irons.

Clearly, it paid off.

After helping lead the Ramblers to the Class C championship as a junior, Owens returned to for his senior season a strong as ever. While the team was not as successful — Winthrop was third in Class C — Owens still had a standout season. He had the low round for his team at states with an 80 and carded the same score the following week in the Class C individual championship, good enough for third place.

For his efforts, Owens has been named the 2015 Kennebec Journal Golfer of the Year.

“Rawn Torrington has been working with him for years so he’s got his swing down and he knows what he’s trying to work on and what he’s trying to improve all the time,” Winthrop golf coach Lonnie Steeves said. “That makes him solid because he knows what he’s trying to get better at.”

Owens’ work ethic has come through in more areas than just his skill development, according to Steeves, as he also takes a calculated approach to each round.

“He’s one of those guys that takes a lot of time to think out everything,” Steeves said. “He’s prepared for practice, he’s prepared for a match, he knows the golf course and he learns the golf courses so he knows where he can go green light or where he needs to go more red light. He’s really excellent with preparation.”

It was a combination of his skills coming together and strategy that allowed Owens to take his game to the next level.

“He was much more consistent with his distance,” Steeves said. “In years past he would be long but he’d be a little wild, but this year he was long and he was straight. That was probably the greatest asset that he had this year was he was playing short irons in a lot and also he found out that on some of the courses that we play — because they don’t always play them from the tips — he’d have nights where he might only hit drive one time.

“He was learning to hit 3 and 5 and hybrids off tees to learn how to get his game set up. That was a real maturing thing this year was for him to learn how to do that.”

Now, Owens will turn his attention from the course to the court as a member of the Ramblers boys basketball team. While he said that he still enjoys golf, there is something about the team aspect of basketball that Owens prefers.

“It’s going great. I’m really enjoying it,” Owens said. “Golf is still a team sport but you’re out on the course alone, and in basketball you have your teammates out there with you, and I really love that.”

Evan Crawley — 621-5640

ecrawley@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @Evan_Crawley