SPRINGFIELD, N.J. — Rich Berberian stood over the 33-foot putt and wasn’t thinking of anything but getting it close, leaving his ball in position to allow himself another chance. Then he brought the putter back like his dad taught him years ago and got more than he bargained for.

As the ball rolled across the perfectly groomed 18th green at Turning Stone Casino’s Atunyote Golf Club 28 days ago, Berberian knew he’d hit it well. Well enough to get him into a playoff for the PGA Professionals Championship, he was quite sure.

Then it dropped and the 28-year-old assistant club pro at Windham (N.H.) Country Club had won the tournament and was on his way to the 98th PGA Championship, proving that dreams do come true even if you began playing golf in the craggy hills of New Hampshire where the season is short and opportunities are limited by the harsh face of a sometimes endless winter.

The son of a club pro, the game has been Berberian’s life, but this week it is more than that. It will be a dream when he steps to the first tee tomorrow at Baltusrol alongside Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and all the other names you read about. All the names that, at one level or another, owe their success to guys like him.

“The PGA of America is the club pros that are going to help grow this game,” two-time Masters winner Bubba Watson said yesterday. “So when I think of the PGA Championship, I think about who is going to impact the young kids the most. Is it the players, or the head pro at a golf course?

“No matter what head pro it is, if it’s at Augusta National or at a public course down the street, they are the ones that are going to grow the game and come up with different games and different ideas and different tournaments to help these young people to want to keep playing and grow the game. I can do a little bit, but the interaction of a club pro is going to do more than Bubba Watson can.”

Those were the words of a public course kid who played his way to No. 2 in the world. They are the kind of words guys like Rich Berberian, and his dad before him, appreciate but probably too seldom hear.

Club pros are the ones who feed the dream. That is what happened to Bubba Watson and Rich Berberian and probably every guy on tour and every guy teeing off this weekend for a $20 Nassau.

But sometimes you may forget. They had dreams too.

“Ever since I was born, he was the pro at Hoodkroft Country Club in Derry,’’ Berberian said of his dad. “I spent a lot of my time there with him. My middle school was right down the street. My high school was right down the street, so after school I could walk down there and see my dad, my pro, who was working his butt off his whole life.

“He’s been through the whole PGA. To be part of it myself and get this opportunity from the organization to come out here and be talking to you guys is unbelievable. It means the world to me.”

Yet this week Berberian is here for something more than a dream. He’s here for the same reason Watson is.

He’s not on a golf course to grow the game or inspire a kid, although he does plenty of both. This week his aim really is to do more than Watson can, and on golf’s biggest stage.

“I want to keep the momentum going,” Berberian said. “I played well out there and I don’t want to let anybody down that’s been supporting me for a long time. But at the end of the day, I know my dad, no matter what I shoot, is going to be there to say it’s all right if I don’t play good. We’ll get ’em on the next one.”

That’s exactly what he said last summer when Berberian survived the withering qualifying process for the U.S. Open only to suffer a disastrous first day born of a nervousness few of us can relate to, having never stood on the first tee at Chambers Bay with the golf world watching, wondering what you’ll do.

That day Berberian was wondering too. Although he didn’t make the cut he played well the second day and believes he learned something from his struggles and from the reaction of his dad when the dream turned out differently than the one you hold when you’re 10 and playing with your friends in Derry.

“I was fortunate to qualify last year,” Berberian said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself and I kind of put myself behind the 8-ball right on the first tee. I had a really bad experience the first day. Since then I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It was nothing about my game or nothing about anything except for lack of experience.

“After that week, my dad was right there to say, ‘Who cares? It’s just a golf tournament.’ That’s all I’m trying to do. Just get myself at ease because I’ve got a lot of friends and family coming out here. Like I said, I don’t want to let them down, but at the end of the day, I’ve just got to go out and play golf. That’s really what I’ve learned from the last tournament out in Washington.”

Rich Berberian will do that tomorrow beginning at 12:45 p.m. when he embarks on the trip of a lifetime. Like that 33-foot putt, who knows how it will fall? Maybe better than you think.

“I hope to keep the streak going … but I learned my lesson on that,” Berberian said. “I’m going to go out there and I’m going to pretend it’s just me out there. Just me playing the golf course. Whatever the par is on the hole doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to try and get it in the hole as soon as I can and however I can.”