In this question, the radicand (the number under the square root) is 7 in each item, and the index is 2 (that is, we are taking square root) in each item, so we can add and subtract the like terms as follows:

2√7 − 5√7 + √7 = −2√7

What I did (in my head) was to factor out √7 as follows:

2√7 − 5√7 + √7

= (2 − 5 + 1)√7

= −2√7