Mark Williams posted a 5-1 match-play record Thursday night and out-averaged the field by nearly five pins per game to take the lead at the 2019 PBA60 Dick Weber Championship.

Williams has a 20-game total of 4,698, a 227.40 average, with six games to go before the stepladder finals at Pro Bowl West in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The match-play finalists will return for six final games at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday to determine the top five who will bowl for the title at Noon Eastern. All rounds of the event are being broadcast live on FloBowling.

Results: PBA60 Dick Weber Championship Match Play Round 1

Williams was in fifth place after the first round of qualifying Wednesday but moved into the lead after the final qualifying round Thursday morning, a spot he was able to hold on by the end of the day.

“I got off to a great start in the first round but then had three 190 games to the end the round which was pretty discouraging,” said Williams, a PBA Hall of Famer who owns two PBA Tournament of Champions titles, in a PBA release. “The majority of the guys have been playing the outside even when the lane (condition) breaks down but I wasn’t able to do that. I started outside but it became evident that as soon as the lanes broke down, I had to have a ball with a strong surface and had to moved inside to about fourth arrow.”

With a 227.40 average so far in the tournament, Williams is just shy of five pins per game better than his next closest competitor.

Rick Minier sits in second place with 4,605, a 222.75 average, after posting a 5-1 record. Emilio Mora Sr. is third with 4,513, Christopher Keane is fourth with 4,487 and Sammy Ventura is fifth with 4,479.

PBA60 David Small’s JAX 60 National Championship winner Brian Voss made a big surge coming all the way from 51st after the first round to ninth with a 4,436 pinfall heading into Friday morning’s second match play round, the PBA reported. The Hall of Famer had a 4-2 record in Thursday’s match-play round.