Head-to-head championship golf is a bloodless sport grounded in the goriest truths. Its deadliest warriors are methodical, emotionless stalkers with a cruel instinct for the pending implosion of a fellow competitor and a cold surety that majors are lost far more often than they are won. The alltime exemplar has been Jack Nicklaus. But in the last decade, no one has mastered this approach the way Nick Faldo has.

On Sunday in the climactic moments of the 60th Masters, Faldo girded himself in his steel-tempered technique and iron resolve to become a final-round leader's worst nightmare. By the quality of his shots and a demeanor that has withstood, and often thrived in, golf's tensest moments, the 38-year-old Englishman made it clear that the six-stroke lead with which Greg Norman started would not be upheld with anything less than first-rate golf.

"I was in control, which is the big thrill," a deeply satisfied Faldo said afterward. "I hit all the shots where I intended to hit them on the day it had to be done."

As disconsolate as he was, Norman had to acknowledge that, just as he has buried others, so was he overwhelmed. "That's golf," he said simply. "I'll wake up tomorrow morning, and I'll breathe, I hope." Faldo's 67 for a 72-hole total of 276 was carried out with the dispassion of an executioner. It included only one bogey as well as putts for birdie or eagle on all but one hole, and was the lowest round of the weekend. For Norman to have won outright, he would have needed a respectable 72.

Most important, Faldo's round contained the ruthless opportunism reminiscent of other seemingly impossible comebacks, such as the one in the 1966 U.S. Open by Billy Casper, who rallied from seven strokes behind Arnold Palmer on the final nine. Like Casper, Faldo stayed maddeningly within striking distance of a player who wouldn't have been human if he hadn't been half expecting a cakewalk. Faldo gradually created so much discomfort that Norman, the game's most consistent performer, cracked.

It was at this point that Faldo began to take command. Although he held a two-stroke lead, the turnaround had been almost too sudden for him to feel in control. "I knew that now I had the pressure," he said, "I had to be careful." After hitting only an average drive on the 485-yard, par-5 13th, Faldo watched Norman, from a poor lie in pine needles to the right of the fairway, reluctantly lay up short of the creek fronting the green. Although a mistake could mean blowing his hard-earned advantage, a strong instinct told Faldo to go for the green. With 206 yards to carry to the front, he pulled out a five-wood but didn't like the way the head sat behind the ball off his sidehill lie. After cogitating for more than a minute, Faldo finally took out his two-iron, leaving himself almost no margin for error. "I had to button it," said Faldo. "If I don't hit it solid, it's in the water. But I felt good, so I obeyed that feeling."

What ensued was a purely struck line drive that will rank with the best shots Faldo has ever hit. It carried on the green to within 30 feet of the pin, and from there he two-putted to match Norman's scrambling birdie. Faldo's two-iron made the statement that while Norman may have handed over his lead with blunders, Faldo had seized it in the vice grip of his flawless game. "That was the whole shooting match," said Norman. Five cleanly played holes later, Faldo had an amazing five-stroke victory and the satisfaction of a man whose lifework and passion have been perfectly applied to the kind of moment for which he lives. Although being the prime force in the destruction of another man's dream caused Faldo to show compassion for Norman by embracing him on the 18th green, there had been no sentiment in his play. "Once I realized that Greg was in trouble, I was just getting harder," said Faldo, "just doing everything a little bit better. The pressure was immense."

It always is in major-championship golf, Faldo's specialty. His third Masters victory - all come-from-behind operations - gave him his sixth major, tying him with Sam Snead and Lee Trevino, and putting him one ahead of Seve Ballesteros, James Braid, Byron Nelson, J.H. Taylor and Peter Thomson. It means only nine players in history have more professional majors than Faldo: Jack Nicklaus with 18, Walter Hagen with 11, Ben Hogan and Gary Player with nine, Tom Watson and Palmer with eight and Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen and Harry Vardon with seven.

Faldo has passed the charismatic Ballesteros, long considered Europe's most significant modern-day player, in much the same way Nicklaus supplanted Palmer. Among tour pros under the age of 45, only Nick Price has won as many as three majors, while Norman, Ben Crenshaw, John Daly and Sandy Lyle are next with two. Clearly, Faldo has now separated himself as his era's dominant player. "I wish I'd won what Nick Faldo's won," said an admiring Norman, who has 70 victories around the world compared with Faldo's 38, "but I haven't." Other than Faldo's first major, the 1987 British Open at Muirfield, his victory on Sunday was his most unexpected. Faldo has been missing from golf's top echelon for most of the last two years. Although he has been noteworthy for changing his base from Europe to America last season and joining the PGA Tour, for recently leaving Gill, the mother of his three children, for 21-year-old former University of Arizona golfer Brenna Cepelak and for scoring a crucial singles victory against Curtis Strange in the Ryder Cup, as a performer on the world stage Faldo has been second rung. Since reaching his peak with a victory at the 1992 British Open at Muirfield - where he squandered a four-stroke lead in the final round before gathering himself over the last four holes - Faldo has been overshadowed first by Price, and in the last two years, by Norman. Coming into the Masters, he had dropped to an alarming ninth on the Sony World Ranking, far behind Norman and No. 2 Colin Montgomerie of Scotland. Before Sunday his last victory of any kind had come more than a year ago when he edged Norman at Doral.

Then again, Faldo has always used regular tournaments as tune-ups for the majors, an approach that, given the results, can hardly be faulted. Beginning in 1984, he and David Leadbetter rebuilt his swing so that it would hold up in the game's greatest tests, and the work paid off at Muirfield in 1987. Faldo soon began an amazing run in majors, starting with his playoff loss to Strange at the U.S. Open at Brookline in 1988. From that event until the PGA Championship of 1992, Faldo's worst finish in 19 majors was a tie for 19th at the 1990 PGA. The streak included four victories and six other finishes of fourth or better. It was a period in which Faldo routinely began the year declaring that his primary goal was to win all four of the season's majors, a never-achieved professional Grand Slam. Although Faldo in 1993 finished third at the British Open and second at the PGA, his game had begun to drift. In 1994 he missed the cut at the U.S. Open, and last year, despite having moved to America in large part to better prepare for the big events, he hit a wall. His best finish in a major was a tie for 24th at Augusta.

It took awhile, but Faldo lost his aura. As he had been in 1984, when he lost his game after making the commitment to change his swing, he was second-guessed. Many questioned an approach that seemed to put tremendous store in swing mechanics. Others wondered if Faldo had become overly analytical and too dependent on Leadbetter. Both men disagreed, contending that most of their work was simple maintenance and that Faldo was mostly a feel player with a soft, natural motion whose greatest strength was an innate sense for hitting the ball the proper distance.

"You can't win any golf tournament without feel and half-shots," says Faldo, who in the last few months has cut down on the number of practice balls he hits. At the Masters his warmup consisted of hitting the same clubs in the same order that he would during the round - for example, a driver and an eight-iron for the 1st hole, a driver and a two-iron for the 2nd, and a three-iron and a nine-iron for the 3rd.

"I like to think this is a springboard, that the game is going well at last and I can compete," said Faldo. "I think in some aspects I'm better than I was in '92."

What's next in 1996? Faldo, already looking ahead to June and Oakland Hills, is considering a life of crime. "Now I've got to find a way to steal the U.S. Open."