1 Awards: For Camdenton’s Amber Wilson, golf is life

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Pick a day. Any day, really. Head to Lake Ozark. Take in its beauty, while you’re there. Drive from golf course to golf course. Many speckle the region, each with its own unique set of rolling green fairways. But together, each course shares a commonality, because on any day, really, Amber Wilson will be there.

“I probably play close to 15-20 tournaments over the summer,” the Camdenton sophomore said the morning after completing the Missouri Junior Amateur Championship.

“It gets normal after a while. You’ve just got to be sure to get practice in between all those days.”

But surely she gets a break, right? Perhaps on work days, when Wilson doubles as a customer service representative at one of those many local courses.

“Yeah, but when I’m not working, it’s golf every day.”

Good. Everyone needs time to relax.

“Or after I work I go play golf. It’s nice working at a golf course so you can just go play whenever you want.”

Alright, so no time off. But when you love a sport like Wilson does, who needs it?

“When I can, I’m on the lake a lot with my grandparents. I try to spend time with my family and do fun stuff like a normal kid would do. Sometimes I feel like I’m so tied up in sports, I need to be a normal teenager and have fun.”

But Wilson’s sense of fun has always found its home on a golf course. Her favorite toy is a set of TaylorMade clubs. Her favorite TV show is whatever camera is fixed on Rory McIlroy. 

“He’s a great, great golfer,” she said.

That obsession with the sport is in her DNA. Wilson’s father, Rob Wilson, is a PGA professional in Camdenton, the inspiration for his daughter’s love of golf, and the first person she thinks of after a successful tournament. 

“As long as my parents are proud of me, that’s what mostly counts,” Wilson said. “I do care if I win or lose, but it’s not as big of a deal as that.”

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Rob began to teach Amber his game when she was just four years old. She took to it immediately.

Wilson teeing off at the 2015 Class 2 state tournament.

“I got to really, really like it, and it just went from there,” she said.

“He’s still my coach (outside of school). It’s great. He’s normally there encouraging me all the time. It’s nice having a coach there 24/7 who will help you whenever you need it.”

The Lakers sophomore posted a 161 (76, 85) at the Class 2 state tournament last fall, good enough for 15th place and all-state honors. If Wilson had matched her Day 1 total in Day 2, it would've meant a top-5 finish.

“My problem is consistency,” she said. “More consistency is probably going to come from practicing and playing more and more each day, and watching more golf, too. My life is basically working and golf.”

But it wasn’t just all-state honors that Wilson decorated her résumé with last year. She came home with a district championship, topping Female Athlete of the Year finalist Ari Acuff of Kickapoo by one stroke. Wilson topped Acuff again at sectionals, but finished second to Warrensburg’s Hanna Johnson.

“Amber [Wilson] is just the total package,” Camdenton head girls golf coach Jane Eidson said.

“She’s got the golfing ability. She’s got the head for it, and the heart for it. If she has a hole she doesn’t like, she puts it behind her and goes on to the next one. She doesn’t let things get her down. She really just knows the game of golf.”

And she relishes the individuality of it. Just speaking with Wilson, it’s easy to hear an athlete with an understanding of herself and her game that goes beyond her age. She speaks about what she needs to work on like a tour pro. There’s a twinge lackadaisical confidence in her tone that's almost Belichickian, but there's no lack of anything at all in her focus.

“I think she’s on a trajectory for a state title,” Eidson said. “She’s set that goal for herself. I think she’ll keep working and working on the parts of her game she needs to work on, and as she keeps playing, she’ll just get stronger mentally.”

A rising junior, Wilson is losing the self-imposed chip on her shoulder of competing against the region’s top upperclassmen. She’s always played against those older than her. It’s good motivation, she says.

After all, the only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent. Wilson knows this, but for her, golf is as much about the competition with yourself than it is with anyone else.

“I like golf because it’s independent,” she said. “It’s only one person. You don’t really have to count on other people, and if you win, it’s all your glory.”

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