The U.S. Presidents Cup team is officially doomed, according to this ominous stat

The International Team came flying out of the gates at the 2019 Presidents Cup.  They raced to a 4-1 lead after the first day’s session and left Tiger Woods’ U.S. team in disarray, and American golf fans abandoning ship in droves.

And it gets worse, because resident Golf Twitter statistician and Head of Content at 15th Club, Justin Ray, dredged up this statistic that suggests the U.S. team’s chances for victory are all but lost. After all, no team in the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup has ever come back from such a deficit.

What should we make of this statistic?

It’s obviously not good for Tiger’s team. No team wants to be in a three-point hole after one session. But I wouldn’t be totally surprised to see the 2019 Presidents Cup be the first time a team overcomes such a deficit to lift the trophy. As we discuss in Thursday’s Tour Confidential Daily, there’s a few reasons why you shouldn’t give up hope just yet.

Three-point leads after one session don’t come around very often, so the sample size likely isn’t huge. When they do come around, it’s usually because the better team has raced to an early lead (as often happens in the Presidents Cup), which makes it all the more unlikely that the inferior team will be able to outplay them for a long enough period to overhaul that gap. Other times, it’s because the teams are relatively level, one team gets hot early (like in the Ryder Cup) and then regresses back to their previous level. When this happens, the opposing team simply runs out of time in a relatively short competition.

All this is just a long way of saying it’s not over yet, but that the U.S. team can’t afford another session like they just had.