In the back room of Tukta Thai restaurant at Walnut Hill and Plano is a custom-designed putting green. Patrons are welcome to practice their stroke between bites of pad thai, but the owners actually built it for their daughter, Bishop Lynch sophomore Amy Ruengmateekhun.

And it’s not just the restaurant that caters to her rigorous practice schedule; her family’s home is smack dab in the middle of a country club. Walk out the front door, and you’ll step onto a par 5 hole. Walk out the back door, and you’re at a par 3.

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Ruengmateekhun is literally surrounded by golf, but that’s perfectly fine with her.

“I’m pretty much golfing all the time now,” she says.

She spends hours on the driving range, and she’s not even old enough to have her driver’s license. She started playing with her dad at age 7, but was playing seriously at age 12, she says.

Most children aren’t serious about anything at that age, much less perfecting their golf swing. But it’s that kind of dedication that earned Ruengmateekhun the Golfer of the Year title from the Dallas Morning News.