MONTREAL – Hoping for a reversal of fortune, national team captain Mike Weir sent the same eight players from the morning to the afternoon foursome in the Presidents Cup.

It’s the first time this has happened in Presidents Cup history.

This means that even after the Internationals forgo the morning session, the quartet of Jason Day, Min Woo Lee, Ben An and Christiaan Bezuidenhout will be at the Royal Montreal all day for the home team. Lee, who was selected as captain for the first time, has not played since Thursday afternoon.

An, Day and Bezuidenhout were all among the victorious alternate-shot teams on Friday, giving the Internationals an unlikely victory that tipped the scales at the halfway point of the contest.

The U.S. and international teams will compete in four four-way matches on Saturday afternoon.

It’s a bold move from Weir, who said he was sticking to the plan he set out at the start of the day even after his team lost the better-ball session 3-1 and are now two points behind on aggregate, 8: 6. Foursomes have historically been a more difficult format for the home team; Before Friday, when the Internationals celebrated their first four-man victory since 2005, they were 33 points above the Americans in this format since 2007.

“They’re playing well,” Weir said. “We like the matchups, we like the pairings and we’re going with it.”

All three Canadians will be sent off for the afternoon – even though Taylor Pendrith and Mackenzie Hughes were statistically the two worst players on the field on Saturday morning. Together, Hughes and his partner Corey Conners managed just one birdie in the morning fourball.

US captain Jim Furyk will revive three of his original foursome starting Friday, with only Collin Morikawa (formerly with Sahith Theegala) and Sam Burns (did not play) joining in rotation for the first time. Theegala will play both sessions on Saturday after struggling badly with his ball-striking on Friday.

Bradley, on the other hand, was the second-best player from tee to green on Saturday morning (during what turned out to be…). 4:3 defeat against Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim), but will spend the afternoon on the bench.

At this stage of the competition, it appears that both captains are relying on their core players.

Furyk will use Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Patrick Cantlay – three of the top four players in the world – for all five sessions. Weir will contest the distance with Hideki Matsuyama, Sungjae Im and Adam Scott, her top three automatic qualifiers, as well as Canadians Conners and Pendrith.