Golfers are an obsessive bunch the world around – and Skye Lampton's no different.

Except the 27-year-old's world is the heart of outback Australia and her plays a sport that her family and community struggles to understand.

The cries of stick to softball – from where she first picked up a golf club – turns to white noise as the focus deepens on improving her short game.

"I am thinking about golf all the time and writing down things in my workbook," she says.

"I constantly write down my golf goals that I'm doing, golf exercises and, when I have a spare moment, I will google golf – just golf."

Yet like a Katherine local, she played her initial early rounds of golf in a pair of thongs and thought nothing of it.

But this trait of Lampton's of breaking out the footwear of choice for a friendly, social hit does not take away from the larger-than-life character's zeal across the past four years of playing.

Between stirring veggies on the hot plate at dinner time, she is known to briefly walk away to practice tapping the ball repetitively into a putt-putt device in the next room.

The backyard further challenges Lampton to chip them into a cart on wheels and not the short distance over the fence.

"I really do dream about golf, all the freaking time," she says.

"It can be annoying because it's on like repeat where I just see myself on the first tee at Darwin Golf Club, just hitting the ball when there is no-one around.

"I see myself on the golf course, every single time, even when I am daydreaming. It's pretty much taken over my thoughts.

"It's so unconscious that when I am standing up, I am often seen swaying and pivoting my back foot like I am swing through the club."

The Dagoman, Wardaman and Gurindji woman's bizarre journey to one of Australia's most aspirational amateurs – and the most prominent Indigenous player – has been a trip off compass.

That start in the quintessential middle-class, white-man sport began after watching a cult film that was anything but a cliché representation of golf.

Lampton's first sight was the Hollywood comedy, Happy Gilmore, who stumbles into golf, slapping down the fairway like an ice-hockey player would do to pucks.

Even now she bursts into laughter just at the mention of actor Adam Sandler's ways of addressing the ball with his unconventional run-up.

"At the back of my mind, I knew that is not how you play golf for real," she says.

Almost on cue to her first sight of a tee or a green outside of a movie screen, a cultural exchange of light-hearted banter first set Lampton's game on course.

Grey-headed American senior citizens, with a fashion sense to match their age and an archaic perception on golf – everything that doesn't speak to Lampton – were only too happy to give advice.

"When I first started, I was over in the (United) States playing and these old men came up and told me to put your hands together, interlock your fingers and move your hips through the ball," she says.

"After all these other brilliant tips, I made friends with these old men and they invited me to come out on the course a couple of times with them.

"Even then that was just a muck around of, 'whether you hit it or if you don't, we are just laughing with you'."

Lampton was far from the finished product, but flew home smiling a lot wiser.

She then gladly played the shark during her first round at the Darwin Golf Club.

That is where there is a club within the club of which Thursday Business Ladies plays out nine holes at the end of that workday.

But it soon became obvious to the group's players the unfancied Aboriginal novice could hit a ball like Happy Gilmore.

"They all took the time with me and before I hit off, I was with this lovely older lady, Penny Steele, who's a doctor, and she's like, 'you just hit it and, yeah, um, good luck," she says.

"I always kept saying that, 'if I do something wrong, please just let me know because I don't know what I'm doing'.

"So that very first time, everyone got up and hit the ball a bit down the fairway a bit, but at my turn I absolutely smashed it down the middle further than anyone else.

"Penny was like 'you don't need my (expletive) help'."

Lampton's name has since travelled beyond that ladies' leaderboard, to second place in the NT Classic, and breakthrough title wins in the NT Country Championships and at the Darwin Open, all in her first three amateur tournaments six weeks apart.

That progress climaxed in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Championships.

Another win, no surprise perhaps, but she found something bigger than just tapping the ball in the hole that weekend on Wajuk land in the West Australian capital.

Rather than rivals facing off, it was more akin to sisterhood on the course that broke down barriers.

"Most of the uncles and aunties who were there also come from a softball background or a footy background originally, and the first thing we did when we all sat down was, we all talked about our goals and what we wanted to achieve (in golf)," she says.

"But the next minute we're all discussing, 'who's your mob, where are you from?', and somehow, we seem to know one another.

"It felt like we were in family."

That vibe changed quickly for the Indigenous winner, who automatically qualified for the Australian Amateur Women's Championship.

But there was hardly nothing too amateur about this tournament in Sydney.

Lampton watched competitors cringe over pulling shots a half metre off the fairway and seek every correction from their finger-wiggling caddies.

She laughed at the reaction – and thought close enough was good enough.

"It all felt a bit fancy, you know," she says.

"That's also when I realised, I had to be on my best behaviour".

From more than 150 future stars, she missed the cut of the top 35 before the weekend and finished 90th overall after the opening two rounds.

But that down-the-card result was more of an eye-opener than a setback for Lampton.

Just the fact the bunkers are filled with sand, and not full of rocks like in the Territory, gave the only First Nations participant more appreciation for the possibilities that lie ahead.

"This was really to set a benchmark for myself," she says.

"I got to see the level that they play at and to work at my game this year.

"I now have a couple of people that I now go to for coaching and I'm going for it."