Presidents Cup 2017: Schedule, pairings announced for Friday’s Four-ball matches

The United States is in a familiar position after the opening session of the 2017 Presidents Cup. The American side jumped on the Internationals in Thursday’s Foursomes session, winning 3.5 of a possible 5 points. The 3.5 to 1.5 lead leaves Team USA ahead at the end of the 27th straight session in this international team play competition.

The Foursomes format has been the key to the American dominance, really since 2000. The format has been their trouble spot in the Ryder Cup against the Euros but it’s been critical to their success here. With their run in Foursomes, it was a no-brainer that American captain Steve Stricker would make that the first day’s format. As the home captain, he had the option of choosing between that and Four-ball and went with the one he figured would give his team the best shot of having that critical day 1 lead.

Justin Ray of Golf Channel pulled the numbers on just how much the Americans have owned the alternate shot format.

The strategy worked for Stricker, and the additional bad news for the Internationals is that the Americans have never lost after leading the opening session.

The format for Friday changes to Four-ball, where the Internationals have held their own in recent years. Four-ball is also known as best ball — each man plays his own ball from tee to the hole and the better of the two goes up against the better of your opponent’s two.

The session will feature five matches, a reduction from the old format in which the entire team went out in a full six-match session. The reduction started in 2015, when International captain Nick Price lobbied for fewer points because lack of depth on his side was a big contributor in the overall non-competitive nature of this event since it started in 1994. The four players who sat out on Thursday — Charley Hoffman and Kevin Chappell for the USA and Adam Hadwin and Anirban Lahiri for the Internationals — will all be in the lineup on Friday. Sitting will be Matt Kuchar and Daniel Berger on the US side, and Emiliano Grillo and Si Woo Kim for the Internationals.

The Internationals have to win the session if they have any hope of getting their second ever win in this thing. They’re 1-9-1 since it started. They probably need to take a full three points to be in it going into Saturday’s double session. Here’s the lineup the captains set on Thursday night:

Golf Channel will again have the coverage from 11:30 a.m. up until 6 p.m. ET.