Tiger to miss cut

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Tiger Woods likely has missed the cut for just the eighth time as a professional on the PGA Tour.

It wasn't yet official Friday as he finished his second round of the Wells Fargo Championship just after 1 p.m. ET, but the projections suggest he will head to South Florida for the weekend to sort out his swing and his game before next week's Players Championship -- 

Woods could manage just a 1-over-par 73 at Quail Hollow and didn't make a birdie over his final nine holes to finish at 144, even par. The 36-hole cut was projected at 1 under and could go to 2 under before the end of the day.

"I figured I needed to get to 3 under to be safe, 2 under for sure," Woods said before departing. "It's frustration. I'm not playing a weekend where I have a chance to compete for a title. I've missed my share of cuts in the past, and none of them feel good."

Nick Watney shot 64 to take the early tournament lead at 12 under.

This marks just the eighth time since Woods turned pro in 1996 that he will miss a 36-hole cut, and the first time that he's done so twice at the same venue or tournament. Woods also missed the cut here in 2010 in just his second tournament after returning from a five-month break because of his personal issues.

Woods has 72 PGA Tour victories. Phil Mickelsonis next among active players with 40 -- and has missed 63 cuts in his career. Vijay Singh has 34 wins and 57 missed cuts.

Woods' last missed cut came at the 2011 PGA Championship in Atlanta, where he was playing for the second time following a four-month break because of knee and Achilles injuries.

After winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational on March 25, Woods was considered a huge favorite going into the Masters. But he never broke par and finished tied for 40th, his worst at Augusta National as a pro.

Woods felt good about his work the past two weeks with swing coach Sean Foley, who said his client struggled with posture issues.

But Woods again lamented the inability to play properly with a new swing and lapsing into old habits.

"It all has to do with my setup," he said. "When I get over the golf ball and feel uncomfortable, I hit it great. I want to get comfortable, and I follow my old stuff and hit it awful. I just tried to get uncomfortable and feel as bad as I could and then I striped it.

"I know what I need to do. I just need more reps doing it. ... We've changed a bunch of different things, and every now and then I fall into the old stuff. And that doesn't work, the combo platter of old and new."

All of this occurred despite a fortunate ruling for Woods at the par-5 fifth hole, where Woods hooked his second shot to the left of the green -- and nobody could find it. A lost ball would have meant a penalty stroke and going back to the original spot to hit again, but witnesses told a PGA Tour rules official that they saw the ball land and that a spectator must have picked it up. Woods got a free drop and made par.

"It was a very unusual situation, but based on all the evidence ... where else could the ball have been," PGA Tour rules official Mark Russell said. "It was like being lost on the floor right here."

None of that mattered, however, when Woods wasn't able to birdie any of the closing holes. He had a 5-footer at the par-4 eighth that might have put him on the cut line, but missed it. At the ninth, his last, he left himself a 50-footer and two-putted. Woods parred all nine holes on the front, and for the round made just two birdies.

Woods hit 14 greens in regulation but needed 33 putts and was ranked 122nd in the field in total putts.

From the 1998 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-am -- where he actually didn't return to play a rain-delayed round -- to the 2005 Byron Nelson Championship, Woods did not miss a cut on the PGA Tour, a record 142 straight tournaments.

Since that time, no player has gone as many as 50 straight tournaments without missing a cut -- although Steve Stricker heads into next week's Players Championship at 49 straight.

"It's a great week, this is one of my favorite tour stops," Woods said. "Unfortunately I'm just not going to be around for it."

Pirates Band of misfits

Though they don’t produce all that many, the British seem to excel at animated films, mostly because they don’t let the fact that the characters on screen are made of clay, paint, or pixels get in the way of treating the audience like more than brainless schoolchildren. The Pirates! Band of Misfits continues this tradition, the only awkward thing about it being the title.

These pirates are such misfits that they don’t even have names – they refer to themselves by unique characteristics. There’s the Pirate with a Scarf (Martin Freeman), the Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), the Albino Pirate (Anton Yelchin), the Strangely Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen), and so on. And they love their captain (Hugh Grant), who is of course called The Pirate Captain, and who provides the best thing about pirate life – regular ham dinners.

In the greater pirate world, however, the Pirate Captain is ridiculed as a weak and ineffective plunderer with an incredible knack for attacking ships with no treasure. A multiple-time loser at the Pirate of the Year Awards, he’s laughed at by better contenders Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry), Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven). And since the award is all about the booty, it seems likely the poor Captain is going to lose again.

But fortune smiles on the misfits when they meet the not-yet-famous scientist Charles Darwin (David Tennant), who instantly notices that the Captain’s rather obese parrot is not a parrot at all, but a dodo bird, long thought extinct. Presenting Polly to the Royal Scientific Society would earn Darwin a huge prize, an opportunity the Captain jumps at as a shortcut to winning his own award. That is, if he doesn’t run afoul of the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), who has her own interest in the bird.

It’s mostly business-as-usual for director Peter Lord and Aardman Studios, creators of previous claymation-style films such as Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit series. Fans will immediately recognize the look, with its bug-eyed and chiclet-toothed characters, and sets filled jokes in the background, but the visuals here seem even more detailed than usual. The water scenes are particularly impressive, achieving near-realism through additional CGI effects.

And, also as usual, it’s the movie’s blend of dry wit and outright silliness that carries the day. These pirates are buffoons, yes, but they’re also quite good at what they do, which leads to all sorts of hilarious non-sequitur moments. The ease at which the “Scientist Captain” is able to infiltrate the Royal Society is as entertaining a sequence as any of the action scenes.

The cast is fantastic. Those used to seeing Hugh Grant as a stammering romantic lead will hardly recognize his voice here, delivering the Captain’s bombast and vulnerability in equal measure. Freeman and Tennant do equally well as advisors competing for the Captain’s attention. There’s even a monkey, trained by Darwin to speak using cue cards, that little ones will especially love.

It all adds up to a film that all audiences will enjoy on different levels. The Pirates! Band of Misfits is a voyage worth signing on for.