It's cold. It's almost completely dark. The Masters Tournament has been over for more than an hour.

But a handful of middle-aged black men can't bring themselves to leave the Augusta National Golf Club early Sunday evening. They stand around a picnic table outside the caddyshack, laughing and joking and trying to make some sense of what they have just witnessed.

Tiger Woods, age 21, has just won his first green jacket. He has just set a new tournament record of 18-under par. He has just obliterated the most prestigious field in the world by 12 strokes. TWELVE! He has just become the first person of color ever to win a major golf championship.

The men just shake their heads, trying to sort it all out.

``I'm telling you, this kid's amazing,'' says Pope, a former Augusta National caddy now working at Winged Foot Golf Club in New York. ``He just ripped this place apart.''

``That's right,'' says Charlie Choice, another former caddie here. ``They had two tournaments this week: one for Tiger and another for everybody else.''

And then the men get to brainstorming. They know the fellows in the green coats, the proud men who run this place. They know those men don't like to be embarrassed, don't like to see their precious ``toonamint'' reduced to a laughingstock.

They know sure as day follows night this place is going to change. They know it's a good thing Tiger set that record this year - using more half-wedges than he'd need at some par-54 executive course - because he'll never see this course again.

Not in this form. Not this easy.

``Oh, yeah,'' says Choice, now a cook at an Italian restaurant in Asbury Park, N.J., a.k.a. Bruce Springsteen's town. ``You'll see some rough around here next year. Be about this high.''

He holds his right hand at waist level, tosses his head back and laughs.

``They'll move some tees back too,'' another man chimes in.

Choice nods.

``Number 10 tee will be back behind the putting green,'' he says, grinning madly. ``Number 15 tee? They'll put it back in the woods somewhere. Number 8 tee will be back across 17 fairway. And No. 13? They'll stick that sucker way back on No. 9 - at Augusta Country Club.''

Pure fantasy, you say? Think again.

The Men of the Masters tinker with their little layout all the time. Seems like they're always adding a new pin placement or flattening out some ridge or another. What else are they going to do with all that money that doesn't go to charity?

David Feherty, the CBS golf analyst, compares Augusta National to one of those majestic European cathedrals that took four or five centuries to build.

``They're still building this golf course,'' Feherty says.

And Woods' stunning performance will simply send the architects into overdrive as they find ways to make the Masters competitive again.

It wouldn't be the first time a single player forced changes at the world's most change-resistant golf club.

Thirty years ago Jack Nicklaus was coming off three Masters titles in four years. His prodigious length off the tee was making a mockery of the wide fairways, his soft touch on the greens rendering them manageable.

So Clifford Roberts marched right out to No. 18 and stuck a pair of yawning bunkers on the left side of the fairway. Exactly where Nicklaus usually drove the ball.

It took the Golden Bear six more tries before he won here again.

Just watch. A year from now the defending champion will roll into town and hardly recognize this place. We're not predicting they'll follow Jesper Parnevik's advice and institute a ``Tiger Tee'' 50 yards behind the area everybody else uses. (That would never stand up in court.) But there will be changes.

``I could see them making adjustments,'' Nicklaus says. ``They're going to have to. They like this course tough. It's supposed to be tough, so when someone comes along and makes it look this easy ...''

The Men of the Masters get angry.

``They could tighten the fairways, maybe add some bunkers,'' Nicklaus adds. ``That would be the most obvious change. I could see them doing that. Even for one man. If he keeps winning everything, yes.''

And after the way this week went, should we really expect Woods to lose anything significant again? After all, as Nicklaus pointed out this week, Woods will only be favored in every tournament he enters for the next 20 years. At least.

Already you've got grown men, wizened sages of the game, going around talking seriously about Woods taking the grand slam. Right now. This year.

Don't bother telling them it's never been done before, not in the modern era. Don't bother reminding them it has never been done, in any form, by anyone not named Robert Tyre Jones.

The wheels are turning. The machine is humming. All caution, all prevailing wisdom, goes flying out the window.

He changed the game.

He'll change the course.

No wonder Charlie and Pope and the rest of the guys are still out there, oblivious to the cold and the dark.

Somebody's got to make sense of this thing somehow.<