MILWAUKEE (AP) – Only one other time has a PGA Tour leaderboard been this crowded after an opening round.

Eight golfers shot 5-under 65s Thursday and were tied for the lead at the U.S. Bank Championship, formerly known as the Greater Milwaukee Open.

Another 10 golfers were one shot back.

“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, according to the PGA Tour, which began keeping such statistics in 1970.

The crowds seemed a bit sparse – 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 beefed up, as well. 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.”

Even that might not be good enough the rest of the tournament, Kelly suggested.

The nasty rough will hound even accurate hitters because some balls will roll off the greens if placement and spin aren’t just right, he said.

“That’s just as bad as missing from the fairway because you cannot control your ball from a foot off the green,” Kelly said. “You’ve got to take a hack at that thing and who knows how it’s going to come out? I whiffed a ton on them in practice. It’s a hazard, as well it should be.”

Kelly, who is from nearby Madison, is hoping to become the first Wisconsin native to win in his home state.

“Outside of my family, it would mean everything,” he said.

Kelly talked up the tournament, which has a title sponsor for the first time, ensuring Milwaukee a PGA Tour stop through at least 2006.

“You can almost say they saved the tournament,” Kelly said. “There was always the possibility of the GMO moving to Minneapolis, because it’s a bigger market. … For the U.S. Bank to step up like that, that’s a fantastic thing for Milwaukee and Wisconsin and this tournament. It can stay here for a very long time.”

Divots: Defending champion Kenny Perry, still feeling the effects of playing in the British Open last weekend, shot a 69. … Seven golfers were tied for the first-round lead at the 1997 GMO. … Even though he’s 11th in the Ryder Cup standings with the top 10 players receiving automatic berths, Kelly plans on skipping the Buick Open and the International the next two weeks. “I don’t play well in either of those tournaments and it does me no good to finish 11th through 50th. There’s no points there,” said Kelly, who plans to get in some extra practice time at Whistling Straits.

AP-ES-07-22-04 2017EDT