There’s a photo that hangs in Amy DeKock’s bedroom back in Southern California that depicts both her past and her future in the game of golf.
In it, her father, Nick, currently the head golf professional at Thunderbird Country Club, is shown chipping onto the green during a tournament in Iowa in one of the more memorable tournaments of his amateur career.
The image is a close-up and Amy likes that you can see all of the defining traits that clearly show her father.
“You can tell it’s him,” Amy recently told R1S1 Sports. “It’s all his same features but he’s like 20. I love it. I love looking at that and thinking, ‘I’m gonna beat him.’”
There are many ways to track the head-to-head competition between father and daughter. And they’ve played plenty of rounds together that have given Amy the chance to take down her dad.
But the metric she wants most is topping Nick’s best round in tournament play. That was a 63, somewhere around the time that the photo was taken. Amy has shot a 63 before. That’s her best score to date. But her best round in a tournament setting is a 65. So there’s still some work to do.
Whether she gets there as a Jayhawk — the hope that she and Kansas coach Lindsay Kuhle share is that she has 10 rounds left in KU blue, starting with this week’s NCAA Regional in Ann Arbor, Michigan — or sometime on the pro tour, which she plans to attack full bore as soon as her college career is over, Amy is confident it can happen.
Just like she was confident — eventually — that she could make a career out of golf.
Hers is not one of those stories about a father putting a club in her hands at age 3 and watching her soar from there. Far from it. Amy was a die-hard dancer from age 4 to 16, but she eventually gave up dance because of back injuries and the understanding that golf is more of a lifelong sport than dance could ever be.
“I think the reason I love the game of golf so much was my dad didn’t force me into it,” she said. “He wanted me to find it on my own. He introduced me to it, sure. And I could tell how passionate he was about it. I mean, there’s golf pictures all over my house. But I genuinely enjoy it because I want to do it, and I just won in the parenting department.”
She also believes she won in the coaching department.
Because she was a bit of a late bloomer in high school, Kansas was one of the few schools that wanted Amy to join its golf team. She had her own list of schools that she wanted to play for, mostly on the west coast closer to home. And she even got into all of them for academics. But none of them wanted her to bring her driver or putter with her.
Kansas did. And her development in Lawrence, as a player and person, has moved her to chuckle at the thought of what those other schools missed out on.
“It’s funny,” she said. “Because now I’ve beaten all of the schools that didn’t want me for golf since I’ve been here.”
She credits Kuhle for seeing something in her that she knew she had and the KU and Lawrence communities for making picking KU one of the easiest choices of her life.
“I could tell her a million times,” Amy said of the Kansas coach. “But she genuinely has changed my life. She’s a huge reason I am where I am today.”
Amy came to KU alone for her official visit. Both she and her parents wanted it that way so she could truly experience it for herself and not with any added input.
When she flew back home from Kansas City to Ontario International Airport in Southern California, her mom knew right away that Amy was going to be a Jayhawk. All she needed to see was her daughter coming down the escalator to passenger pickup.
“My mom said she’s never seen my smile that big,” Amy said, smiling big again.
The reason?
“There’s nothing better for a player in any sport than for your coach to want you to be around, that they want to coach you and they see potential in your game that they can pour into,” she said.
She felt that from Kuhle and at KU and has made it her home for the past four years.
Amy has been a part of some pretty good Kansas golf teams. They’ve routinely qualified for the NCAA Tournament. They made it to nationals last year. And the list of team and individual records that have fallen in the last four years is too long to type here.
For most of her career, Amy was content to be part of the team, do what she could to contribute to its success and watch the smiles, laughs and hardware roll in.
This year, however, as one of the team’s top returners and a senior, she had to step into more of a leadership role. It mattered to her and she was determined to be as good as she could for her team. But even that she took with some perspective.
“It was definitely eye-opening,” Amy said of the new role. “But I didn’t feel too much pressure because I knew what I had to do for this team to be successful. Obviously, the other girls know they can come to me with questions; I’ve been here for three years. But I’ll take advice from a freshman on a chip anytime. If they’re doing something better than me, I’m happy to learn from them.”
It’s that attitude and how consistent she was with it throughout her career that led to her being named the winner of the 2025-26 Marlene Mawson Exemplary Woman Student-Athlete Award.
The award, given annually since the 2007-08 school year to one senior female student-athlete who plays an integral role on her respective team and demonstrates strong character and leadership qualities while also being a strong competitor, was the perfect encapsulation of what Amy did during her KU career.
She won events and contributed to team successes each year and will leave KU with her name etched in the program’s record books on some meaningful Top 5 lists — career scoring list and single-season scoring list chief among them.
But the way she carried herself and competed always showed those around her that she was about more than her scorecard.
“Amy leads with accountability, empathy and communication, and with a strong sense of gratitude for the teammates who came before her, responsibility for those beside her and a desire to leave the program better than she found it,” Coach Kuhle said when Amy earned the award.
Words like those, along with what the award stands for, were not lost on Amy, who remained emotional about the honor a few months after receiving it. As much for what it allowed her to do today as how it showed what she had done.
“I feel like I could do a better job of recognizing the success I’ve had while I’m here,” she said. “I played so well my sophomore year and last year and I didn’t even recognize it because, it was like, it’s just golf. That award meant so much to me and I owe it to my coaches and my parents and my family and my supporters. Without them, I wouldn’t be here. It’s crazy to think that my name’s going to be on that award forever.”
Amy’s last run as a Jayhawk, whether it lasts three rounds or all 10, will begin today at the University of Michigan Golf Course in Ann Arbor.
Her tee time is set for 8:17 a.m., and the top five teams, along with the low-scoring individual not on a top-five team, will advance to nationals later this month in California.
— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com
