Ryder Cup 2025: The Friday stat that should have U.S. fans most worried

A lot didn’t go right for the U.S Ryder Cup team on Friday at Bethpage Black. While the home team traditionally has success (for reasons still not quite understood) in foursomes, the Americans wound up trailing 3-1 through the morning session. Worst yet, their most counted on players, Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas, all found themselves scraping around a losing effort.

Afternoon fourball wasn’t too much better, Europe winning that session, too, to take a 5½-2½ lead, and silence the U.S. crowds.

OK, so there’s “plenty of golf still to be played”™ as anybody associated with both teams was quick to say ahead as the sun set on Friday. But the performance that the Europeans put on (or the Americans failed to put on) is a bit foreboding when you look back at the history of the Ryder Cup. And that’s what Elias Sports Bureau did, digging up a variety of stats to contextualize what happened to both sides and what that might mean in terms of predicting the ultimate outcome on Sunday.

For instance, according to ESB, this is the first time that Europe has won the first three matches played in a Ryder Cup when it’s been held in the U.S. And it’s just the third time in the last 27 Ryder Cups that the Europeans have earned at least three points in the first session, the other two times coming in 2004 and 2023. At both of those Ryder Cups, they won the overall match with the U.S. by at least five points.

There was also this stat that can’t give the Americans a lot of solace. The U.S. has overcome a 3-1 or worse deficit in the opening session to win the Ryder Cup only two times. The first was in 1949 at Ganton Golf Club in England, the U.S. winning 9-7. The second was all the way back in 1971, when the Americans rallied to win at Old Warson Country Club in St. Louis (and comfortably 18½-13½. An aside … Europe has actually overcome that same 3-1 or worse deficit in the first session to win the Ryder Cup three times (1957, 1985 and 2018 in France).

But after day was complete, it’s this stat that just might be the most concerning to U.S. Ryder Cup fans. Only once in the modern era of the match (1979 to the present) has a team comeback from a three-point deficit after Day 1. That happened in 1999, when the U.S. had its amazing Sunday rally at The Country Club. So there’s a chance … but not a great one.

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