Chris Green has the perfect last name for a golfer.

"The short game is my favorite. Chipping and putting, that’s what I have to do well. I’m not one of the bigger guys. I don’t hit it as far as everyone, so I focus on the greens quite a bit."

Last week Chris was great on the greens. The Illinois–Wesleyan junior finished second at the NCAA Division III national championships in Georgia - only 5 strokes behind the winner.

"I’ve always known that I have the game to compete at that level. Golf is a frustrating game because you can never get all of the pieces together at once. Fortunately, for the past month or so, I’ve been putting all the good things together."

Early in the season IWU golf coach Jim Ott challenged Chris. He told him that if he didn't raise the level of his game his spot as a starter on the team might be in jeopardy. Apparently, the pep talk helped. A lot.

"He won the conference championship two weeks before that," said Ott, "and you wondered did he just get hot for that weekend or is this something where he’s going to turn it on. We got down there on the national stage and he was just amazing."

The smallest player on the team, it took Chris two years to grow into a starter's role at Wesleyan. Now he can even beat his father, Steve, a scratch golfer who made his son's first club from scratch.

"He used to take me out when I was little. I had a cut down putter that he gave me and I would ride in the cart with him, throw a ball on the green and putt around while he was playing. That was fun for a while, but eventually it got to the point where I was big enough that I could play a par-4 like a par-4 – two shots to the green and two-putt it. Once I got to that point I started to think, 'This could be fun.'

Now that Chris has been named a PING All–American he's having more fun than he ever imagined. In Bloomington, Marc Strauss, News 25.