It's true, you never know if you're going to panic in an emergency until it happens. My worst (and there've been a few in my 30 plus years of tailwheel strip and aeros flying, all of which I'd have gladly swapped at the time for this guy's non-threatening predicament) was a partial engine failure at 300' off a short runway (engine nearly jumping off the aeroplane, instruments unreadble due the vibration, radio inaudiable due the banging and backfiring) expecting the engine to sieze at any moment, with nothing but real estate in front of us and the aeroplane just barely flying albeit downhill a bit. Don't turn back? I had to, and we made the runway, just.
Flying mostly old aeroplanes, I've had others that I'd call 'mis-fires' rather than the real partial failure that this one was.
I was gratified to discover that when it happened the training kicked in immediately, so me and my pax are still around. Everything seemed to happen very slowly, and we both had time to notice three beautiful white swans flying past the other way - serenity in the midst of that cacophony.
I know people who have dealt with far worse than that. And my mate did indeed land a high-wing taildragger with the whole main gear missing from one side, not just the wheel so it needed some effort to keep right-side-up on landing (it had hit a rock on T/O from a strip). He conformed it was no big deal.
So really, although this guy 'only' had 120 hours (to put it in perspective that's about 3 times what most of us took to get our PPLs back in 1978 - by 120 hours most of us were flying aeros and tailwheel aeroplanes into farm strips - so he's no neophyte) he really didn't do very well at all in a situation that wasn't particularly threatening and alot of time to plan his landing.