Two men were giving a golf clinic in California one day last October and, gathered around them on the practice ground, watching closely, were the select few who had been invited to attend. Tiger Woods was calling the shots and Anthony Kim was hitting them. It seemed a metaphor for golf in the second half of 2008, when the game went on without Woods, its biggest star, while he recovered from knee surgery and, in his absence, the talk was of who would challenge him when he returned to the game.

Professional golf from June 16 to the end of the year was an unusual time in the game's history. Without Woods, TV ratings were down and so were attendances at tournaments. Two major championships and almost exactly half a season's events were staged without the world's pre-eminent player.

Woods did not compete in the Ryder Cup for the first time since 1995 - and the United States won for only the second time since 1993.

The American was not even able to compete in his own tournament last month. Still recovering from his knee surgery, his role at the Chevron World Challenge was that of host.

Woods had won the first four tournaments in which he competed in 2008, finished second in the Masters and won the US Open after 91 holes, but he did not win the Player of the Year award in the US, as he had in eight of the previous nine years. That went to Padraig Harrington, who won the Open and the USPGA Championship three weeks later.

Yet any doubt about Woods's dominance of his sport should be dispelled by the publication in Golf Digest, the US magazine, of figures suggesting that Woods won $7.73million (now about £5.31million) in prize-money last year and earned a further $109.60million from endorsements. No other player came close to his total of $117.33million: not Harrington, who earned $17.63 million in winnings and sponsorship, and not Sergio García, the world No2 whose income on and off the course combined to bring him $24.97 million.

In fact, the player after Woods who earned the most money on and off the course was Phil Mickelson, with $44.85 million, a cool $72.48million less than Woods.

Woods hopes to return to competitive golf in March, perhaps at a World Golf Championships event at Doral, near Miami, Florida. That would be one month before the Masters, the first major championship of the year. His recovery after an operation on an anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee on June 24, 2008 is said to be going well. He was hitting chips and putting before Christmas; he is now moving up through his bag. Soon he will be hitting drives.

The game needs him playing competitively again and so do the players. “The reason we want Tiger back is because he drives the game of golf,” Mickelson said. “He drives television ratings, the sponsors need him in their events and fans turn out to see him. We are very lucky in golf to have the No1 athlete in the world. We had some of the greatest players in history, whether it was Ben Hogan or Jack Nicklaus, but nobody ever reached the status of the premier athlete in the world before.”

Which brings us back to that clinic in California last October conducted by the world No1 and the American who made such an impression in the Ryder Cup. Kim, 23, is considered by some to have a better swing than Woods at the same age and to be the young player most likely to challenge Woods in the coming years. This would seem to ignore the claims of Harrington, who has won three of the past six major championships, García, the new world No2, Vijay Singh, who won the FedEx Series of play-off events in the US, and Camilo Villegas, 26, the talented Colombian, who is ranked No7 in the world.

As evidence for this claim about Kim, his supporters point to the fact that he is the first American under the age of 25 to win two events in one season since Woods. So this was a clinic given by “The King” and his heir apparent, you might say. It was also one that reminded you of just what the game was missing.