SOUTHAMPTON, Bermuda – Difficult as it is to take your eyes off vistas of turquoise waters when you stand high upon Port Royal Golf Course on the south end of this idyllic island, sometimes your gaze is pulled elsewhere and you follow your radar in another direction.

Specifically, last Saturday there was the image of a teenager named Caleb Surratt walking from the 18th green to the first tee midway through his third round of the Butterfield Bermuda Championship. His face looked frozen with shock.

For good reason, it was quickly learned. Less than 90 minutes prior, on his fifth hole of the morning, Surratt had taken 12 strokes to play the par-4 14th.

Exactly 24 hours later, the inner radar had again pushed toward that same walk, only now it was to watch Surratt draw an end to his PGA Tour debut with an eagle at the par-5 17th and a birdie at 18, getting him to 6-under 65 for the day. There was something comforting to see that the face was no longer frozen in shock.

Oh, how in 24 hours this young man’s education in golf had been massively impacted and his impeccable character tested. Surratt may never experience such a swing of fortunes as this trip to the cozy confines of Port Royal had produced – a birdie-birdie-birdie Friday finish to make the cut on the number; a rare “octuple-bogey” with three consecutive OB shots to take him to the bottom of the leaderboard; a Saturday 85 that was made even more painful when he read folks having Twitter fun at his expense; then most pleasing of all, the final strokes to end a wild ride of 71-64-85-65.

Toss them all together and the take-away was hugely favorable. This 19-year-old college freshman was a study in remarkable decorum.

“I feel like I belong out here and definitely I’ll be back,” said Surratt, a freshman at the University of Tennessee who earned his spot into the Bermuda Championship by virtue of winning the overall Elite Amateur Series during the summer.

He won his first collegiate start, carrying that summer momentum to the next level, but brush aside all those successes; it was how he rebounded from that third-round experience on the 14th hole that speaks volumes for the young man’s character.

“Literally, the only way I can describe it,” said Surratt, “was it was the most benign freak accident I’ve ever (been part of).”

The anatomy of Surratt’s “octuple-bogey” needs an introduction of Port Royal’s 14th hole. When the wind blows hard from right-to-left, as it normally does and did all weekend, it’s a brute of a 395-yard hole. As often happens, Surratt’s drive was pushed hard left into a forest of trees and he had to hit another, this time leaving his ball in rough right of the fairway.

Lying three, the madness settled in as from 180 yards Surratt ripped a 7-iron, then an 8-iron, then a 9-iron. Each shot went deep into a three-tier green and bounded over, down a steep slope and out-of-bounds.

“I think we misjudged the wind and got jumpers,” said Surratt, who on his fourth shot from that spot (stroke No. 10) was a wedge pin-high. He two-putted for a 12.

From 6-under and in possession of dreams of getting into the top 20 (then at 10-under), Surratt on one hole fell back to 2-over. Understandably, he was crushed. “It wasn’t like I just made a double, which I can get back,” he said. “No, you just went 8-over on one hole. You’re not getting 8-over back.”

Jonathan Byrd, a five-time PGA Tour winner who was teeing it up in his 454th tournament at this level, was a playing competitor who felt the young man’s pain. Partly because he knows of Surratt from junior golf (“He was very nice to my son, who is younger and looks up to him”) and partly because he, too, was a young kid who once made these mental mistakes.

“He misjudged the wind and probably had the wrong clubs,” said Byrd. “That can happen on a windy day like that.”

But here is what doesn’t just happen. Here is what took place because it is engrained in Surratt. “He did a great job with his composure,” said Byrd. “He handled it well. He didn’t throw a club. He didn’t complain. He didn’t blame his caddie.”

Surratt continued on for 13 more holes but concedes he was hard-pressed to shake off the 14th. “I wasn’t thinking about the hole (per se), but I was deflated. It just felt like that hole took everything away that I had going for me.”

The 14th hole and the round of 85 were bad enough, but Surratt concedes he compounded those mistakes by checking in on Twitter. He saw things that bothered him, nothing malicious or vicious, mind you, but there was the usual sophomoric stuff that poked fun at his mishap.

Surratt talked to those within his circle and the advice was resounding. “Stop looking at it,” they told him.

Reaching out to Byrd via text, Surratt got a similar message, only it was delivered in a beautiful manner, one that perhaps took him by surprise. Byrd chose to paraphrase the first sentences to the famed quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

“It’s not the critic that counts . . . But the credit belongs to the man in the arena,” texted Byrd.

“Then I told him, ‘Be proud. Walk tall.’ ”

Returning the next morning for Round 4, Surratt was again the man in the arena. This time he had an eagle, two birdies, and a 6-under 65. He was proud. He stood tall.