Addiction problems in past, Duke now exudes joy

By Ken MacLeod

In a pro shop brimming with Christmas cheer, Amber Duke has an inner glow as bright as any holiday display. The 36-year-old assistant PGA professional at The Oaks Country Club in Tulsa has many reasons to be happy and thankful this Christmas season, and the staff, members and her friends have just as many reasons to be thankful for her.

“Amber’s presence and her outlook on life is just so contagious,” said Derrick Vest, the director of golf at The Oaks. “She’s so great for our members and our staff. She just has a very uplifting personality.”

Uplifting has been an accurate description for Duke for quite some time but wasn’t always the case. The former state high school champion for Jenks gained national attention when Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols wrote a stunning profile in 2016 detailing her overcoming her history of family tragedy and struggles with alcohol and drug addiction.

You can read the story here. It details how Duke grew up in a household where she never knew her father, her mother wound up in prison and she was raised by her grandparents. Talented but troubled from a young age, she used golf almost as a weapon to lash out at the world. She wanted to beat your brains in and often did, whether sober or high as a kite.

At Jenks, she drove the team to four consecutive Class 6A state championships, winning the individual title in her senior year of 2007 with a final-round 7-under 65 at Lincoln Park West. She joined a talented Oral Roberts University team coached by Lance Watson and continued to mostly play well and mostly play high.

It all crashed down in her junior year at a tournament hosted by Baylor, where Duke was too addled to function. Watson pulled her aside and kept her near him during the tournament, then there was a tough decision to make upon returning home.

“I didn’t really know what to do,” Watson said. “I asked Sean Sutton for help and he was in my office in a matter of minutes.”

Sutton, the former Oklahoma State basketball player and coach, had recently returned from spending 115 days at Cirque Lodge, a recovery clinic in Utah, seeking help with his own addiction to pain pills that had led to his being charged with four felony drug counts in 2010. He was at ORU helping brother Scott, then the head men’s basketball coach. He helped arrange for Amber to go there as well and she did for three months, emerging with a tenuous handle on her twin addictions.

“It was right in the middle of our season but we put her on a plane and it was a long stint,” Watson said. “She resented me for a while and I was mad as well, mostly because I went so long without recognizing what was going on. She never did play for us again but she came back and finished school.

“Amber is my girl and I’m so proud of where she is today. We talk all the time now. When she was here, she was as tough as nails and when she was right was a great player. She beat Amy Anderson (future LPGA player) for the conference championship as a sophomore. “

Duke spent four years after becoming sober trying to reach the LPGA Tour, qualifying to play on what was then the Symetra Tour, now Epson Tour. Her game was solid but she had lost a bit of the edge that fueled her junior and college careers, the feeling of wanting to run over someone to ease that empty feeling her home life had left her with.

“My natural instinct was whoever is in my path, `I’m going to bulldoze you out of my path,’ ” Duke said. “When that was my life and golf was my outlet, that’s why I was good, I took everything out on the golf course and was going to make sure that I was going to win. And when you get sober, you don’t want to use those instincts. “What I tell myself now to fuel the drive is joy, peace, kindness. So how do you go from that killer instinct to this Powder Puff? The first couple of years it was hard.”

Duke eventually gave up the LPGA Tour chase and accepted a position at Litl’ Links Golf Course in Broken Arrow, helping owners Kyle and Jim Ingram with their burgeoning junior program for the better part of five years.

In 2021, she was hired by Mark Budler at Indian Springs Country Club, where he encouraged her to finish her work toward becoming a Class A PGA teaching professional, which she did. But not before nearly embarking on an entirely new career.

“Coming out of Litl’ Links, I had let myself get delinquent on my PGA requirements,” Duke said. “I was a little bit burned out on the golf business so I twice went through the application process to become a Tulsa police officer.”

Duke advanced through the 30-page application, the physical tests, the psychological assessment, the oral exam where you are graded on problem solving and critical thinking, all the way to chief selection and did not make the final cut for the academy. She wonders still if her background was the determining factor.

“On one hand, do you really want a police officer to have that type of background?” she said. “But at the same time, do they have the experience with the same people that they’re dealing with on the streets? Is someone going to listen to you if you’ve had that type of experience?

“I think absolutely and more often times than not, there are people that have those kind of backgrounds that have changed their lives and are doing great work in the street.”

The Tulsa Police Department’s loss was the golf industry’s gain. Duke instead worked for two years at Indian Springs, where Budler became a big fan.

“Amber went from delinquent with the PGA to more than an employee,” Budler said. “She babysat my kids and became a great friend. She was a leader for us with junior golf, with the ladies association, with lessons. She can play at a very high level, which is not a common trait. I hope she wins assistant of the year, I’ve nominated her for that.”

Duke, who has been instructed at various times by such local luminaries as Janice Gibson, Tracy Phillips and Michael Boyd, won the South Central Section Easter Chapter Assistant of the Year award in 2023 and Duke was informed last Friday that she had also won the newly created South Central Section Female Player of the Year award for 2024.

Playing just slightly shorter distances than the men, she finished second on Oct 14 at the Clear Creek Section Championship at Hillcrest Country Club in Bartlesville, shooting consecutive rounds of 2-under 70. It was the best finish by a woman in the event’s history. She recently competed in the National Car Rental PGA Assistants Professional Championship in Florida.

Playing great golf, serving the membership at The Oaks and enjoying her life with husband Justin and therapy dog Gatsby, making daily visits to help take care of grandparents Virgil and Willie, who raised her and were always there for her, makes her life fulfilling. She often speaks to groups or individuals about the dangers of addiction or the path to a cure. As many dark roads as she has walked in the past, there may be even brighter lanes ahead.

“I feel like I’m just trying to gain as many experiences and as much knowledge as I can from anyone and everyone that I work with or that I’m around,” she said. “I’m just going to trust in the process of how I move forward. Where the relationships and friendships and experiences will take me is where I’m supposed to go.”

As mentioned, the membership has taken to Duke in her first year at The Oaks and the feeling is mutual. “The membership here, they’re all invested 100 percent and the club does a great job of listening to them,” she said. “There’s a spiritual part of everything and the relationship we have with the members is spiritual. If we’re providing that type of experience for everyone, they’re going to want to be here.”

And they are happy that Duke is with them.