The Finish Is Everything at Sawgrass : Golf: Pavin and Langer share the lead in Players Championship, but dangers lurk in the final three holes today.

From the way things went Saturday in the third round of the $3-million Players Championship, the winner of the $540,000 first prize and a 10-year tour exemption will be the player who best negotiates the final three holes, the crucible of TPC at Sawgrass, in today’s final round.

Saving par was the order of the day as a changing wind and rock-hard greens continued to frustrate the world’s greatest golfers.

Corey Pavin, scratching and clawing around the 6,896-yard golfing torture chamber, managed to finish with a par 72 and a share of the 54-hole lead with methodical Bernhard Langer of Germany at 211, five under par. Langer, the two-time Masters champion, shot 71 after taking three putts on the final hole to drop into the tie.

1993 U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen fashioned a three-under-par 69 to move into third place at 212. Another shot back was Payne Stewart, who had an up-and-down 71.

Gene Sauers, who shared the halfway lead with Pavin, will attest to the pressure of the final two holes. Only three shots out of the lead, Sauers hit one in the water on the 17th hole and again on the 18th for back-to-back double bogeys.

“If the course plays tomorrow like it did today, anything under par could be a winning score,” Langer said. “I don’t know whose idea it was, but they presented us with a very different course than the one we played last year. What we have here are U.S. Open conditions.”

Last year, Greg Norman won with a 24-under-par score that embarrassed PGA Tour officials, but conditions were vastly different. The greens were soft from rains the previous week and there was no wind.

Although Pavin shot even par Saturday, it was hardly an even round. The Nissan L.A. Open winner from UCLA had four birdies, four bogeys and an equal number of par-saving scrambles. Langer, one of Pavin’s closest friends on the tour, was also a scrambler’s delight as he saved par on six holes.

Langer briefly took the lead alone when he sank a putt on the 15th hole that he said measured 78 feet. “It was one of the longest, maybe the longest, of my career,” he said. “It broke three different directions before it hit the hole.”

With a closely bunched field, the final three holes become more significant in the final round. There can be big swings in either direction.

No. 16, a 497-yard par five, is the easiest hole among the 18, offering eagle opportunities for someone willing to gamble to pick up a stroke or two in the final moments. The leaders will play it carefully, but someone like, say Peter Jacobsen or Mark McCumber or Davis Love III, could risk it all and try to sneak up on Pavin and Langer.

“If you’re a good driver you have an opportunity to make the green in two, but there’s a lot of fiddle dee do if you miss the green,” said Jacobsen, who is three shots back of the leaders after a 71. “Anything can happen.”

Then comes No. 17, only 132 yards long, but almost completely surrounded by water.

“Seventeen is the only place on the tour where you get an 8-iron or a 9-iron in your hand and your only thought is to get the ball on land,” Janzen said. “The green is plenty big enough, but the wind plays with your mind.”

Nick Price was still in contention when he came to No. 17 Saturday. Twice his ball landed in the water and now the world’s No. 1-ranked player is at 219, eight strokes behind and tied for 29th.

Nick Faldo and Mark O’Meara shot themselves out of the tournament when they each put two balls in the lake on Thursday, enough to make them miss the 36-hole cut.

No. 18, a 440-yard par-four that curves around the right edge of a lake, calls for a long and accurate drive followed by a long and accurate iron. Anything less and the ball is either in the water or in a cluster of hilly mounds covered with thick grass.

The mixture of the three holes, so different in character, can make or break a round at TPC. They all go different ways and all demand something different in shot-making.

“You don’t want to think about coming to those last three holes with a one-shot lead, or trailing by a shot either, on Sunday,” Janzen said.