The two greats have struggled recently, but they're both poised to return to form in 2012
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One of the many unfortunate qualities shared by the arenas of sports and politics is a rush to bury people before they're dead. I call it the Premature Obituary, where a candidate's chances are written off at the first debate stumble or press-conference slip of the tongue, and an aging, slumping athlete is over the hill after a month of below-average performance. Political pundits have been rolling out one premature obituary after the next this year, with a plethora of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination mistakenly dismissed before their time.
In the sports world, two of the most celebrated athletes, Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, were pronounced finished by a majority of the media and public in 2011. And that is a serious mistake, because after their respective Novembers, Woods and Federer are poised for monster seasons in 2012.
In the public's defense, it has been hard to be optimistic about Tiger's long-term golf prospects since his precipitous fall from grace. He hasn't won a tournament since 2009, hasn't contended in a PGA Tour event since the Masters and has unbelievably fallen out of the top 50 in the World Golf Rankings. Even Woods' ex-caddie, Steve Williams, has been more successful than he has, winning a World Golf Championship event in August with new boss, Adam Scott.