Change has always come slowly to Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters. Now Tiger Woods is shaking things up in a way no one could ever imagine.

Augusta, with the elegance of Magnolia Lane, the secrecy of its exclusive membership and a tournament than shuns corporate sponsors and has minimal TV coverage, offers a gentle glimpse at the past.

Woods has put on a show in the first three rounds of the Masters that forced everyone to take a hard stare at the future of golf.

His only competition seemed to be names like Nicklaus, Palmer, Player and Floyd, a quartet that won 14 Masters among them.

``The only thing I want is a green jacket in my closet,'' Woods said when asked what he needed to shoot on Sunday to win. ``Whatever I have to do to win is fine.''

It's always been said that the Masters starts on the back nine on Sunday. This year, it may have ended on the front nine on Saturday.

Beginning the third round with a three-stroke lead over Colin Montgomerie, Woods went head-to-head with him and dusted not only the Scotsman but blew away the entire field.

``I told my pop before I left someone was going to make a run, shooting at least a 66,'' he said. ``I'm a little surprised no one made a run. But the tournament is not over yet.''

A 32 on the front nine and a 65 for the round put Woods at 15-under-par 201 after 54 holes, nine strokes ahead of Costantino Rocca, 10 better than Paul Stankowski and 11 in front of Tom Kite and Tom Watson.

Asked if he had a chance to win, Rocca said: ``Maybe if I play nine holes - and under par, too.''

Woods placed the perfect stamp on the round on the final hole when he spun a sand wedge back from the fringe behind the green to within a foot of the hole for a tap-in birdie.

``Tomorrow there is no chance unless I shoot 57,'' Stankowski said.

Woods' nine-stroke lead after 54 holes surpassed by one the Masters record set by Raymond Floyd in 1976. He now can take aim at the record nine-stroke victory margin of Jack Nicklaus in 1965 over Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.

``He's a boy among men, and he's showing the men how to play golf at Augusta National this week in the Masters,'' Watson said.

Woods can break the lowest score ever in the Masters, the 17-under-par 271 by Floyd in '76 and Nicklaus in '65. He can also be the youngest Masters winner. Nicklaus and Seve Ballesteros were both 23 when they won at Augusta.

And just a half-dozen years after Augusta National accepted its first black member, it may watch on Sunday as the green jacket is put on its first black champion - the first black to win any of the four major professional championships.

Woods' awesome length off the tee - he averaged 311.5 yards on Saturday - rock-solid concentration and unshakable belief that he should win make him an unlikely candidate to fold in the final round, like Greg Norman did last year when he blew a six-stroke lead.

``His mind is like the mind I had when I was in my prime,'' Nicklaus said after finishing his round on Saturday. ``He's very smart, very intelligent. That's why I don't think anything is going to happen to him tomorrow.''

At times in Woods' whirlwind eight-month professional career, it seemed as if the hype was hurrying history in a way that was unfair to him, his contemporaries and those great golfers who came before.

But Woods' performance after a shaky front nine in the first round on Thursday left him playing this tournament against the record books and not the field.

Woods has been 19-under par since playing the front nine of the first round in 40. Since he bogeyed the 8th hole in that round, he has made two eagles and six birdies on the par-5 holes.

And he played with confidence. Several times, he walked to pick the ball out of the cup even as the putts were barely halfway to the hole. Woods was finally shaken from his stoic stare on No. 11 when the massive gallery reacted to his birdie with a wild standing ovation.

He flashed that brilliant smile again after his tee shot on the dangerous 12th hole safely cleared Rae's Creek - scene of so many watery disasters in Masters past - and plopped just 15 feet from the hole.

And on No. 13, he stared disgustedly at the the cup in bitter disappointment after making a mere human par. He had made two eagles and six birdies on his last eight par-5 holes until then.

When Woods rolled in a birdie putt at No. 15, Stankowski looked up at the TV with an air of the inevitable and said, ``Oh, is he 14 under now? That's encouraging.''

On Friday, Montgomerie said his experience in major championships - he has a second and a third in the U.S. Open and a second in the PGA - would serve him well in his matchup with Woods, who was contending in a major for the first time as a professional.

It was Woods who played like he had spent his entire life on the golf course, which, of course, he has.

Woods made two good par-saving putts in the first three holes to get his confidence early, rolling in a 4-footer on the first hole and a 13-footer on No. 3. After that, he putted as if he had never heard the horror stories of the steeply contoured greens that putt with the speed of a tile floor.

He made a 15-footer for birdie on No. 5, a 12-footer on the seventh hole and two-putted for birdie from 20 feet on No. 8. Woods turned the front nine with an eight-stroke lead and quickly made it nine with a 312-yard drive and a 143 yard wedge to 10 feet for a birdie on No. 11.

The back nine was almost a mere formality, an almost bureaucratic rubber stamping of Woods' greatness.

On each hole, the ovations built. By the time he walked up the 18th fairway, he was being carried along by the kind of cheers served for Hogan, Palmer and Nicklaus.

It was a fitting end to a day that put Woods one round away from winning the first major championship he has played as a professional - yet another thing no one has ever done.