Robert Streb has come a long way to make it to Augusta

It’s right there on Robert Streb’s profile on the PGA Tour Web site.

After wading through Streb’s likes (Italian food, Jason Aldean and Happy Gilmore, among others) and his dream foursome – his father (David), brother (Garrett) and Arnold Palmer – you get to his two bucket list items.

The first is to attend a Texas-Oklahoma football game. The other is to play at Augusta National Golf Club.

Both seem natural for someone born and bred in Oklahoma and practically raised on the golf course. And of the two, the one that seemed rather easily attainable was taking in the Red River Rivalry.

Go figure, the Masters dream came true first.

“I’m the bad dad because he’s never gotten to the OU-Texas game,” David Streb joked. “My buddies tease me all the time about that. But when he was growing up, we were always at a golf or hockey tournament. It just never worked out.”

It will work out eventually, and Streb will fulfill that dream as well.

As far as getting to the Masters, well, that was one Streb never could have been completely sure would have ever worked out. Yet it has and when he tees off at 11:25 a.m. Thursday alongside Ben Martin and Cameron Tringale, Streb will cross a pretty big one off the list.

“As a kid you just always want to go,” Streb said. “You’re not sure how you’re going to get there, but you want to go.”

INDEED, IT IS a journey to get to Augusta National. Some golfers spend their entire lives striving to set foot on the course’s hallowed grounds and never quite get there.

For others, it falls into place rather easily.

Streb’s journey falls somewhere in between. He’s met with his share of setbacks and heartbreaks, the kind that can sometime be devastating.

Yet every dose of adversity has been met with an emphatic response from Streb. He’s been undeterred in his pursuit to be a successful professional golfer.

“When he gets somewhere and he gets comfortable or feels like he belongs, he does well,” David Streb said of his son. “Whether that’s college, high school or as a professional. At every step, he’s done it and it’s been fun to watch.”

The gut punches have come at every step of the way. From being passed over for scholarship offers by in-state favorites Oklahoma State and Oklahoma to finishing 126th on the PGA Tour’s FedEx Points Standings and thus losing his full tour card for a year, Streb has run the gamut of emotions.

But through it all, he’s kept his same determined, quiet and calm demeanor, refusing to let the setbacks become permanent.

Though he admits, “The 126 hurt for a while. That wasn’t very fun. I thought about it for a long time, but I also looked at what I needed to work on and got after it at the start of the year.”

The ability to take a punch and come back perhaps was honed during his days spent participating in his other childhood sporting passion, hockey. Though he didn’t take to the sport as quickly as he did golf and realized even quicker he didn’t have a future on the ice.

“I would have liked to play, but when you’re 5 foot tall in ninth grade, you’re not going very far,” he said.

Streb played throughout high school.

In hockey, you’re going to take a hit or two, maybe even a punch. When it happens, you merely pick yourself up and skate on.

“You get beat up a little bit playing hockey and you can get beat up a little bit on the golf course,” Streb said. “You just have to get over things pretty quick. You have to be tough about it. You can’t roll over and die.”

DAVID STREB COULDN’T help but introduce his sons to golf. A solid golfer in his own right, he made every effort to keep his game sharp for the state amateurs and U.S. Open qualifiers he routinely played in.

With his wife, Lauren, traveling for her job, Streb had but one choice if he wanted to head to the range – take the boys with him.

While Garrett stayed in the stroller as an infant, a 2-year-old Robert set up next to his father and began taking swings.

“He’d get a pile of balls and a sawed off club and I’d get 30 minutes to work on my game while he had fun,” David said. “He’d stay hooked up. It wasn’t anything serious. When he was 7 or 8, we joined Oak Tree and he got to playing some and it just grew from there.”

So did Streb’s ability. By the time he finished his prep career at Edmond (Okla.) North High School, he was an accomplished golfer at a school that was producing a load of Division I players, eventually earning a spot in the Edmond Junior Golf Hall of Fame.

The only offers he received from local college heavyweights Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, however, were walk-on, and that didn’t interest Streb. So he chose Kansas State.

“I wanted to go somewhere I can play and play a lot,” said Streb, who became an All-American for the Wildcats, posting 12 career top-five finishes. “It helps to play. You get to travel around and see different places and different courses. That’s what I wanted to do. Coach (Tim Norris) played on tour for a long time and it was nice to see what he thought about things and what I needed to do.”

Norris, who played on the PGA Tour from 1981-’89, was a four-time winner and played in the 1983 Masters, saw plenty of potential when he started recruiting Streb. Perhaps the thing that stuck out the most, however, was Streb’s demeanor.

“He’s always been pretty even-headed,” said Norris, who coached at Kansas State from 1997-2013. “He would get upset after a bad shot, like all golfers do, but he didn’t let it bother him long. He didn’t ever let one hole carry over to the next.”

That was evident in Streb’s only career PGA Tour victory, the 2014 McGladrey Classic. Streb opened that tournament with a double bogey on his first hole, but came back to beat Will MacKenzie and Brendon de Jonge in a playoff for his first tour win.

“That tells you everything you need to know about him,” Norris said.

David Streb has seen that trait all along as well.

“Watching him, he’s very calm and pretty soft-spoken and that’s served him well,” he said. “That consistency and that calmness have been big. What you see is what you get with him.”

The influences to reinforce that behavior have been many. From his father to Bob Tway, a fellow member of Oak Tree Country Club and father to Streb’s high school teammate Kevin Tway, to Norris and former Kansas State pro Jim Colbert, who frequently visited the program and was grandfather to Streb’s college teammate and roommate Kyle Yonke – all have had impacts.

“Bob was a real help to Robert,” David Streb said. “He was a calming, positive influence in a very quiet way. He was just the nicest guy in the world, a perfect gentleman.”

Streb shows those traits constantly. It’s not rare for him to take time from his practice to chat with members of the gallery or to stop to sign autographs for lengthy periods of time for young fans.

“Any time you watch your child succeed, it’s something special, but what means more is when we hear stories of being kind to the children or when he’s playing in a pro-am and you hear comments about how nice he is,” David Streb said. “As a parent that means as much as winning a tournament. It’s neat because we know how hard he’s worked and how few people get there. There are way more that don’t than do, and I’m glad he’s getting the fruits of his labor.”

THE FRUITS OF his labor paid off with his first Masters appearance.

He got his first look at the course in mid-March and admitted it wasn’t anything like he expected.

“It’s funny without the people,” he said. “Whenever you watch it on TV, there are people everywhere. But when you get here, it looks totally different. On 9 and 18, the greens are kind of just out there. It’s weird. But it’s really cool here and they treat you so well.”

Streb’s game seemingly fits the course layout, playing a strong right-to-left game off the tee.

“I’m really excited to see how he’s going to do,” Norris said. “Hopefully it will be a great week for him and I hope it’s not just a once-in-a-lifetime deal for him.”

And one that Streb has dreamt about for some time.

“When I turned pro after college, I was like, ‘I want to go play there,’ ” he said. “I felt I could do well here. You never know until you play it. But I thought it would be a neat place to play, as it would be for anybody.

“I feel like if you’re playing well you’re going to have a chance. I’m going to soak it all in while I can.”