Australian Junior Championships – A Roaring Success

The 2026 Australian Junior Championships has concluded, with plenty of highlights from some of the best juniors in the country.

The first Australian Girls Amateur was played in 1953 in conjunction with the women’s amateur at Royal Perth Golf Club. In 1982, the first Boys Amateur was played at Royal Sydney Golf Club. Over the years, past Boys Champions include Adam Scott, Jason Day, Cameron Smith, and more recently the likes of Cameron John and Elvis Smylie. For the Girls, the honour roll is just as impressive, with major champions Grace Kim and Minjee Lee joining Sarah Kemp and Su-Hyun Oh as notable past winners.

Arguably the week’s biggest highlight came on Wednesday, when Queensland’s Tony Cho broke Ballarat’s Amateur course record, shooting a 7-under par round of 65. The women’s composite course record was also set throughout the week, with Teresa Wang, Camilla Kim, and Mirabelle Naaman also shooting 3-under par rounds of 68.

In total, every state and territory in Australia was represented, with players from 6 overseas countries also teeing it up. From Ballarat’s end, Sky Adirekchotikul and Pearl Goodwin both battled bravely in the biggest tournament of their respective careers so far, and certainly did us proud with their efforts.

The winners were Kanchiro Katano from Japan and Amelia Harris from Victoria with scores of eight and six under respectively. Harris is ranked inside the top 100 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings for women of all ages; while Katano becomes the event’s first champion born outside Australia and New Zealand. This goes to show that the event we just hosted was truly a world class stage. They now receive starts in the 2027 Australian Amateur and Victorian Opens.

A big thank you to our volunteers for assisting in making the event the success that it was; as well as to Golf Australia for selecting our venue to play host to the tournament.

Click here for overall scores from the event.