Tiger Woods, toward the end of October, was the defending champion at the Zozo Championship. He was two days away from playing this year’s Zozo at Sherwood Country Club in California, one of his most successful tracks. His L.A. Dodgers were playing their first game of the World Series, which they would go on to win. The mood was good.
Good enough to do a PGA Tour-filmed, “rapid-fire” Q&A, the sort of task that’s sometimes about as enjoyable to a player as a three-putt.
Good enough even to sit in a striped chair, look directly into a camera and answer question eight, maybe one of the more profound questions you can ever be asked:
One thing you would change about yourself?
“My hairline,” he laughed. “I would like to have more hair.”
Fair enough.
Woods, according to the PGA Tour’s website, stands 6-foot-1. If given one chance to change one thing, he’d change the very end of that “1.” Revealing? Sure, he’s 44, and parts of your head sometimes do, in fact, become more revealed around this time. Not so revealing? Sure, but this is Tiger Woods, and he probably wouldn’t have unwrapped anything more in this format. It was worth a shot.
Of course, back in the spring for GolfTV, Woods was asked a similar question, and his answer was farther down from the top of his head.
If you had one thing you could go back in time and tell your younger self, what would it be?”
“Yeah, not to run so much,” he said. “Running over 30 miles a week for probably my first five, six years on Tour pretty much destroyed my body and my knees,” Woods said.
More from the Woods’ Tour rapid fire:
Q: Favorite Japanese food?
Woods: “I can tell you one thing: It’s not cow tongue because I’ve had it there once, and it’s not my favorite.”
Q: Where would you like to visit in Japan?
Woods: Well, I’ve been to every main island there in Japan. Where would I like to visit the most? That’s a great question. I don’t really know where I would like to be specifically, but I would like to, if I had a chance, it would be do more touring of Toyko. I know that’s probably not the great answer. But Toyko’s always had so many great parts of it, and I just haven’t seen a lot of it because I’ve been so busy.
Q: Do you know any Japanese?
Woods: No. Arigato.
Q: If you weren’t a professional golfer, what would you be?
Woods: I would be in the military. One of the things that – my dad was in the military; he was in special forces. And one of the things that if my golfing career didn’t work out, I was going to join the military. So it was one of the two. So either a professional golfer or being in the military and serving.
Q: Do you have a motto?
Woods: I guess I really don’t. I know I’ve been asked this a couple times today, I guess. I can always get better. How do you get better? I mean, that’s one of the things that’s a great question because you can be better in pretty much anything and everything you do. And one of things my dad always used to say: Care and share. If you care about something, you’ll share it. I guess I can get better at that, too.
Q: Any pre-round superstitions?
Woods: I won’t say any superstitions, per se. I do have certain routines. I do eat a lot. I do go through my normal hour and 15 minute warm-up routine, making sure that I’m ready to go for my tee time And you know, I still have – I wouldn’t say it’s a superstition – but I have a routine of what clubs I go through. It’s my sand wedge, 8-iron, 4-iron, 5-wood, 3-wood, driver and back to my 8-iron, back to my 60, and then off I go putt. So it’s not a superstition; it’s just my routine.
Q: Favorite sport other than golf?
Woods: Right now, as we speak, my Dodgers are playing. And so we’re in the World Series, and if that TV turns on right there, then you’ll see Kershaw on the bump right now.
Q: My go-to karaoke song?
Woods: One, I don’t sing. So do I have a karaoke song? No, because I don’t sing.
Q: And my favorite Disney character?
Woods: I wouldn’t say – he’s not necessarily Disney, but my favorite character is Batman.
