Hard to believe that another year has come and gone, boy time really flies when you get older.
Many wonder how good 2009 is going to be after the shaky ending to 2008 with the economy being the way it was and the John Daly saga. Still I feel that 2009 can be a very good year on a numerous of fronts, so let's take a look into my crystal ball and I will tell you what to look forward too.

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Photo: © Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images Tiger Woods would much rather play golf and win than give presentations on his newest creation.

Tiger Woods - The most anticipant moment has to be the comeback of Tiger Woods. It's hard to believe that Woods only played in six events for the whole year and only one in the last 8 months. No too ways about, when Woods doesn't play the viewership numbers do go down. Some rather shocking numbers, ratings for the PGA Championship were down 55% compared to the previous year and it seemed that the ending of the FedEx Cup showed a continuing trend in the downward motion. All four FedEx Cup playoffs were down compared to last year, the Barclays was only 14% down and the reason for the small decrease was because Woods didn't play in '07. But the others were steeply down, the Deutsche Bank and the BMW Championship down 63% while the Tour Championship was down 45%. Despite these being terrible, the good news is that if Woods has a successful return, those numbers will dramatically increase in '09.

So the question is when will Tiger return and what kind of shape will his game be in? Nobody knows for sure on a return other than what Woods said at the Chevron last month that he is looking to play in the Masters and hopefully will have a couple of warm-up events before. So the smart money says his return will come at the WGC-CA Championship at Doral. For my money I think he will play the week before at the Honda Classic, just because he has said in the past how impressive the course looked and the fact that he will be moving very shortly just down the road in Jupiter.

As for his game you know that he will have the same intensity as he did before and if he can win a U.S. Open in the manner that he did with his bad leg, he should be fine. It will be interesting to see how much he has to change his swing in order to not put strain on the leg and what new tricks he has up his sleeve. No matter what, this will be a boom for all in golf because many folks will return to watch the game, helping everyone.

• Next look at '09
• Players - Four with a lot on the line in 2009 click page