An amply regular graph is a regular graph such that any two adjacent vertices have α common neighbors and any two vertices with distance 2 have β common neighbors. We prove a sharp lower bound estimate for the Lin--Lu--Yau curvature of any amply regular graph with girth 3 and β>α
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. The proof involves new ideas relating discrete Ricci curvature with local matching properties: This includes a novel construction of a regular bipartite graph from the local structure and related distance estimates. As a consequence, we obtain sharp diameter and eigenvalue bounds for amply regular graphs.