Nineteen-year-old Rory McIlroy totally outplayed defending champion Brett Rumford on Saturday and will take a four-stroke lead into the final round of the Omega European Masters in Switzerland.
If he takes the title and the £268,010 first prize McIlroy will become the third youngest winner in European Tour history.
South African Dale Hayes was only 18 when he won the 1971 Spanish Open, while Seve Ballesteros was just five days younger than McIlroy at the 1976 Dutch Open - the first of his record 50 Tour victories.
Rumford, joint top at halfway with the Northern Ireland teenager, threw down the gauntlet with an opening 40-foot eagle putt.
But McIlroy had already hit his approach to the par five to three feet, made the putt for a matching three and by adding six birdies went on to score a 66 to the Australian's 73.
That took last year's leading amateur at the Open, who began his first trip to Crans-sur-Sierre with a 63, to 13 under par and continued a remarkable turnaround in his fortunes after missing the last three halfway cuts.
His closest challengers now, all on nine under, are England's Robert Dinwiddie, French pair Christian Cevaer and Jean-Francois Lucquin, Spaniard Alejandro Canizares, Argentina's Juan Abbate and also Julien Clement, a Swiss player who does not have a European Tour card and is ranked 779th in the world.
McIlroy's professional career is still not quite one year old. He left the amateur ranks after winning a Walker Cup cap and within a month had finished third in the Dunhill Links at St Andrews and fourth at the Madrid Open.
As a result he did not have to go to the tour qualifying school, but until this week his 2008 campaign had not delivered in the way many people expected.
He is 89th on the Order of Merit, only six places higher than he managed in four starts last year. But winning on Sunday could more than double his money and put him 33rd.