Eight share lead with opening 65's

Eight golfers shot 5-under 65s Thursday and were tied for the lead at the U.S. Bank Championship, one stroke ahead of 10 others.

"A lot of people, a lot of golf (left)," said Danny Briggs, who was tied for first with Todd Fischer, Bo Van Pelt, Brett Quigley, Patrick Sheehan, Brian Kortan, Robert Gamez and Olin Browne.

The Honda Classic in 2000 had the only other eight-way tie for first after one round in an event on U.S. PGA Tour, which began keeping such statistics in 1970.

The crowds seemed a bit sparse at the tournement formerly called the Greater Milwaukee Open - many fans might be following the lead of some corporate sponsors and saving their money for next month's PGA Championship at nearby Whistling Straits.

But the field is a little deeper this year, and the course at Brown Deer Park is more difficult. The greens are firmer than normal and the notoriously deep rough is nastier than ever.

"Last year I remember the rough being up here, too," Fischer said. "But there's some spots here that you might need a Weed Eater to get out."

Among those 66 were Paul Azinger, who called this "a mini-U.S. Open," and Jerry Kelly, who described it best when he said the rough he encountered on No. 15 was "a bird's nest in a hawk's nest."

Brown Deer just isn't the pushover it used to be even though 62 players broke par and another two dozen matched it.

"This course is awesome right now," Kelly said. "You get a little wind and a little sunshine out there, this weekend it's going to be a tough golf course. And you never heard that about Brown Deer before. You hear it's a good golf course, but not tough. This weekend, it could be tough."

The firm greens and deep rough have put some teeth into the famously mild par-70 layout that measures 6,759 yards, one of the shortest on the PGA Tour. It puts a premium on iron play and putting while neutralizing the long hitters.

An unusually wet spring and summer contributed to the thick rough.

"It's nasty, but I didn't experience much of it," said Kortan, who found himself in the rough just once.

Gamez was in the rough twice, on the par-3 14th, when he chipped in from 30 feet for birdie, and again on 18, when he missed a birdie putt that would have given him the outright lead.

"It's a very fair course," Gamez said. "You just have to hit the fairways and get it on the green."

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