If you’re expecting Tiger Woods to be his old world-beating self next season, prepare yourself for this possibility: he may not truly be back to form until 2010.

“I’ll be hitting golf balls next year, and that’s what we’re looking at right now,” Woods said yesterday on ESPN Radio.

Hitting golf balls? That sounds a long way from lapping fields and winning majors.

“That certainly could be delayed with the rehab if the leg doesn’t respond, if it continues to swell," Woods continued. "We don’t know.”

Ernie Els, who had surgery to repair torn knee ligaments in 2005, chimed in with more grim news yesterday at the PGA. 

“It’s going to take him a while to get over that injury,” Els said. “The first couple of weeks when he comes back it will swell up and … he’ll feel for it another six months. That’s what I went through.

“So he’s not going to be over the injury for another year after he’s come back.”

And who knows, maybe longer. Look at Els — he still doesn’t look his old self.