STATESBORO, Ga. – Georgia Southern golfer Charlie Martin strode to the tee box on hole 1 at The Scarlet Course last May in Columbus, Ohio.

He put his tee in the ground, went through his pre-shot routine, addressed the ball and with butterflies jumping around his stomach thought, "I hope I don't hook this into the woods."

Not exactly the mindset you want to have when you are about to take your first swing in your first NCAA Regional. For Martin, a junior from LaGrange, Ga., it was the culmination of a downward spiral in his golf game that had begun about four months earlier. It left him reeling, his confidence shattered, so much so that he was literally petrified.

"I was so scared to hit the ball, it wasn't even funny," he says, in a matter of fact tone nearly a year later. "I was just scared of the golf ball in general. As soon as I got to the ball, I would decelerate and try and look to see where it was going before I would even make contact. It was absolutely the most humbling experience I have ever gone through."

The breakdown in Charlie's swing reared its ugly head most often off the tee as he hooked everything left. His practice round a day earlier was so bad that Georgia Southern associate coach Carter Collins had taken him to Scioto Country Club, Jack Nicklaus' home course, for an extra nine holes to try to work out the issue.

Charlie hit the ball okay when he warmed up the morning of the first round, and as he teed it up on the first hole, fingers were crossed with the hope that his drive would be straight and true and land in the fairway.

It did not. For the next three days, most of them didn't. The Scarlet Course at Ohio State plays over 7,400 yards long and is rated one of the finest collegiate courses in the nation. The average score for the NCAA Regional that weekend wound up being 4-over-par. It's difficult to say the least, but it is especially brutal and nearly impossible if you miss fairways.

"It seemed like on every tee shot, there was a tree or some type of obstruction 100 yards off the tee on the right and then there was a bunker or a pond on the left," recalls Will Evans, a senior team captain who played in the NCAAs with Martin. "If you're not visually feeling it, that's intimidating. It had long rough and very deep bunkers, which were placed in the absolute perfect spot. Whoever that architect is was a mean person."

Charlie found himself scrambling for par, bogey or even worse after almost every tee shot.

"I had a lot of 300-yard shots on par 4s," he remembers. "My wedge game got pretty good. I think that was the only thing I could count on."

Hole 17, a 221-yard par 3 up a hill, which wound up being the toughest hole of the tournament, is bordered tightly on the left by a tall, green fence with a major road on the other side of it. Martin approached the hole on the first day, weary from having scratched and clawed his way to being 7-over with two holes to go. Not that bad, considering.

The pin placement was on the right, tucked behind a bunker, and Charlie because of the mental state he was in, had two thoughts – don't go left and don't hit it in the bunker. A second later, the ball was hooking over the fence, bouncing through the street past oncoming traffic, where it came to rest in some bushes on the other side.

The weekend duffer at the muni track laughs that one off as he tees up his eighth mulligan of the round. For Charlie, an accomplished amateur golfer who had posted five top-20 finishes for the Eagles that season, it was an embarrassment. He posted a triple bogey and continued on his way.

He battled the Scarlet Course for 37 more holes over the next two days. He managed to scratch out an 81 in the first two rounds, a testament to his intestinal fortitude and short game, but the mental and physical grind took its toll in the form of an 86 on day three. He finished 75th, dead last, and when it was over, he was not quite sure if he would ever play competitive golf again.

"He putted the eyes out of the ball for three days and slept like a rock each night because of the mental exhaustion of going through what he did every day," says Collins. "I was extremely impressed by his grind and his heart. It could have been way worse." 

Walking the line
Athletes walk a fine line between being confident and overconfident. They cannot perform at their peak if they are not confident in their abilities. But overconfidence can result in lethargy, where an athlete thinks they are so good that they do not need to work as hard.

Charlie admits that after a solid freshman season in which he finished in the top-25 four times, followed by two top-5 outings in the fall of his sophomore campaign, he may have crossed that line.

"I wasn't really putting in the time that I should have," Charlie says. "I guess I thought it was something that was always going to be there. My confidence got so low in not posting good scores, and if you aren't out practicing enough, you can't build that confidence up."

His game began to slip in the spring, and after he tied for 19th at the Samford Intercollegiate in early March, his scoring average began to rise. His 72 in the third round there was the last time he would shoot par or better for the rest of the season.

"It was a progression," he says.  "I was hitting kind of a duck hook, maybe one of every 10 shots, but then it got to the point where I was so scared to hit that shot that I would hit it every time. When we got to regionals, I would look at what is around the fairway, and that's the absolute last thing you want to do – like don't hit it there, don't hit it there. Your mind doesn't register the word no or don't so if you say, 'don't go in that bunker,' more than likely, you are going in that bunker."

The game spirals, the confidence wanes, the game gets worse and the confidence dissipates. It's a vicious cycle, especially when you factor in how good of a golfer you once were.

"I remember coming into college my freshman year and saying to myself, 'I'm better than everyone on this team,'" says Charlie.  "I just had that confidence that I knew that I could beat everybody out there. But it got to a point where, 'I just hope I can qualify,' and then it got to a point where, 'I shouldn't even be on the team.'"

A long, lonely road
A golf swing is an extremely personal characteristic, like a fingerprint. No two are exactly the same. When your swing breaks down, only you, and maybe whoever who helped you develop your swing, can put it back together.

"I was always taught by my swing coach that the worst thing a player can do is ask the wrong people for advice," says Evans. "Because like for me, only my coach and I know where I'm trying to go with the golf club and the best way to get there. I knew kind of what I wanted to say, but I didn't want to put thoughts in his head and make it worse."

Plus, when a guy is struggling this bad, what do you tell him?

"They didn't really know what to say so they didn't say much," says Charlie, remembering how his teammates reacted to his predicament on The Scarlet Course. "I could tell there was a little wall between us because they knew what I was going through."

And no matter how much work you put into fixing your swing, you are ultimately the one who has to have enough confidence to take those thousands of swings you practiced, stand over the ball in a competitive round and have enough confidence to use that same swing to strike it and put it where you want it. That's the challenge that lay ahead of Charlie.

"When you stand on that tee and your golf ball is looking at you and you're sitting there scared to death of it, only one person can cure that," says Collins. "At the end of the day it has to be Charlie trusting that his athletic ability will take care of where that golf ball needs to go."

Charlie started the summer by taking a few weeks off and slowly worked his way back into it, playing with his brothers and some friends – nothing too serious. He took the first lesson he's had since he came to Georgia Southern. His swing was not getting better but he opted to play in some amateur tournaments he had entered and went through his preparation by practicing the way he always had. Hindsight being 20-20, that may have been the wrong way to go about it.

"I knew I had those tournaments coming up so I was trying to practice and that was just the wrong way to approach it," says Charlie.  "I needed to take time on my own and do what I thought was good for that time and not think, 'this is what you've always done so you need to do that.' I needed to get back to my basics – just see ball, hit ball."

Most of the tournaments did not go well either.

"It was just wearing me out playing in those tournaments," says Charlie. "I've played bad at times, but I've never gone through what I went through for those three months. I couldn't even break 80."

Did you ever think of quitting?

"There's that quote, 'I'll take two weeks off and then I'll quit,'" he says. "I definitely said that a few times, kind of joking but at the same time this has been my dream since I can remember, playing college first and then once I started getting older, thinking maybe I can do something with it. Really, it just motivated me to work harder."

A leap of faith
Charlie didn't quit. Instead he became a sponge, seeking out advice at times. It was not a quick fix. There was no a-ha moment. It was a painstaking, extremely slow, arduous process that took the rest of the summer. The only way to get it back was through hard work, hours upon hours on the range and on the course.

"It's a leap of faith for him," says Collins. "He's got to make this jump and understand that underneath him will be solid ground. He had to quit golf, fall in love with golf again, prove to himself he could hit the ball, prove to his buddies back home that he could hit the ball on his home course, then do it on our course then do it in front of his peers at qualifying."

Charlie remembers one day, hitting driver off the No. 1 tee at the Bennett-Ramsey Golf Center, the EagIes' practice facility. All he did was try to hit a cut shot, a ball that would go right.

"I was hitting driver for 30 minutes, and I think I lost about 60 balls in those woods over there," he says. "It would start left and go left."

He started changing his thought process. Instead of worrying about where he shouldn't hit it, he visualized and focused where he should hit it. He started learning more about the golf swing. Charlie's swing came so natural, that he had never needed to learn the nuances of it. He got some swing suggestions from Paul Claxton, a friend of Georgia Southern coach Larry Mays and Collins, who plays on the Web.com tour. Claxton also gave him some drills so that instead of just hitting balls, he practiced with a purpose.

"That was when I really learned how to control my swing," says Charlie. "Paul was trying to make me get disciplined on which way I should work the ball and always practice with a purpose – like hit five draws into that flag but don't go left of the pin."

As the summer turned into fall, Charlie got more comfortable and more confident.

"It slowly started coming back to me," says Charlie. "It took a while for me to get that confidence back to see my target and say, 'ok, that's where I'm going to hit it,' and then hit it there. That's really where I've gotten better. I've kind of loosened up and simplified everything. The game is hard; you should try to make it as easy as you can."

All the way back
Charlie was feeling comfortable and confident but still had not tested his mettle in a competitive tournament situation. He, his teammates and the coaching staff knew the first step would be through qualifying.

A college golf team generally has twice the number of players on its roster than the 5-man lineup the coaches submit for a tournament. Decisions on who makes the lineup are most often made through team qualifiers. It's fairly simple, especially at the start of a season – finish in the top 5 of the qualifier and be in the lineup for the Eagles' first tournament, the Fighting Irish Classic at Notre Dame. That was Charlie's goal.

Mays and Collins set up a grueling 6-round qualifier to determine the lineup for Notre Dame. Charlie posted a team-high 75 in the first round at Savannah Harbor. Collins called it a "nervy 75." He came back the next day and shot a 71 at Forest Heights Country Club, tied for the third lowest on the team and his first competitive round under par since the previous March. Test #1 – pass.

"He made a four or five-footer for birdie on the last hole, and he walked off the green and he was walking three-feet off the ground," says Collins. "This kid had gone without a competitive under-par round for six or seven months and to watch him do it in front of his peers and coaches – the same people he felt he let down towards the end of the year and to show them, 'hey guys, I'm going to be here to help you out this year' – it's wonderful to see that satisfaction of five months of something he put his heart and soul into pay off."

He shot par or under for the next four rounds of the qualifier, posting a 69 in the fourth round at Forest Heights, and earned a spot in the lineup for Notre Dame. Test #2 – pass.

Test #3 was the real deal – play tournament golf in the Georgia Southern lineup. Charlie's last tournament and last round in the lineup for Georgia Southern had been four months earlier at The Scarlet Course at Ohio State, and The Warren Course at Notre Dame is awfully similar to The Scarlet Course.

"The same climate, the same hills, the same type of grass, and Warren Course is difficult, not as difficult as they made Scarlet Course play, but an extremely solid course, and you had to hit the ball well there," says Collins.

Charlie strode to the tee box on hole 2, his first hole of the tournament, put his tee in the ground, went through his pre-shot routine, addressed the ball and with butterflies jumping around his stomach, made that leap of faith. Two strokes later, he had made birdie and five holes later, he was 3-under-par on his way to a team-low 69. He tied for 24th in the tournament. Test #3 – pass.

"It's a complete 180," said Evans. "He's worked his butt off, and to see him turn it around like he did, it's really, really cool to see."

Better for the journey
Charlie has played in five of Georgia Southern's six tournaments this season and ranks fourth on the team with 74.07 scoring average. He will be in the lineup again when the Eagles head to the Samford Intercollegiate Monday and Tuesday. He believes the adversity he faced has made him better.

There were a number of times over the last 10 months when Charlie thought he hit the bottom. Looking back, it may very well have been a conversation with Collins and Mays after the practice round on The Scarlet Course, when they discussed pulling him from the lineup.

"After they said that to me, it really made me want to work harder because I never want to be in that position again. That's the worst feeling ever," he says. "Going through all of that, being so low - I mean like rock bottom - it's made me a better player and a better person. I think it's helped me find a balance and know exactly what I want and help me become the person I want to be. I think I was searching for that heading into that spring. It was a journey."

In addition to rededicating himself to golf, Charlie has gotten much better in the mental aspects of the game. He is more adept at visualizing a shot and has become a better course manager.

"I used to just pick out a target and fire right at it, now I understand you have to work the ball the right way and miss the ball in the right spots. I've matured to where golf is a game of misses," he says. "I just take it hole by hole, shot by shot."

He has become more of a student of the swing and as a result, much more in tune with his swing, which will help him make corrections when necessary.

"I know exactly what I'm doing if I'm doing something wrong - knowing if I hit it left, why it went left," says Charlie. "I can feel it now."

He has also improved his temperament.

"It used to be if I hit a good drive, hit my second shot to 6 feet, and missed a putt, I would get mad about it," he says. "You can't get mad about that kind of stuff. It's golf, you're not going to make every putt. It is frustrating, but it could be a lot worse."

His game is not perfect but he understands it never will be, and that's okay. He will just continue to grind – just like he did on The Scarlet Course for three days, just like he did all summer, just like he did at Notre Dame, just like he does every day.

"I'm hitting the ball really well right now," Charlie says. "My putter is not quite cooperating, but I've never been able to work the ball as well as I have, and I've never hit the ball as far. I'm very, very close to being where I want to be."