Placements
Okay, I found this stat box in the New York Times' online archives.
It's also printed, with the entire article, in
The New York Times Encyclopedia of Sports: Tennis. The articles run from the late 1800s to 1978. There are stat boxes in the book for over thirty matches from 1920-56, starting with this one and ending with Ken Rosewall's victory over Lew Hoad at Forest Hills.
These stats boxes are different from ones that I have found in the archives for later years, ie, the Open Era. The older ones are all roughly the same style, with the same terminology. They all account for every point played, with the total number of points played often helpfully listed in its own column.
With this style, you can check the individual stats and see for yourself that they all add up, so it gives you confidence that the individual stats are correct.
This is different from stat boxes I have found, for instance, in the late 70s. In those, service percentage is starting to be counted, and errors are divided into forced and unforced rather than Nets and Outs. Sometimes you get the total number of points, sometimes you don't.
But leaving that aside, I'd like to bring up that issue of "placements" again. In the 1920 stat box, GP does stand for Ground Placements, since that is a term found within the article. And the players' ground placements were contrasted with their volleys, so I'm fairly certain that V. stands for volley placements.
If anyone can shed some light on this, it looks like the volley and ground placements (V and GP) are clean winners. I say that because if they're not all clean winners, untouched by the opponent's racquet, then some of them of would be errors by the opponent: a ball hit into the Net or hit Out (N and O).
I suppose it's possible that a judgment could have been made by the statistician, where balls barely touched by the opponent but not returned, are called "placements" for the winner of the point and not listed as errors for the loser. That's how the statisticians would have had to do it, in order for the total number of placements, errors, aces and doubles to add up to the total number of points listed.
But I see no indication that such a judgment process was going on. It looks rather like a simple process of dividing points by winners, errors, aces, and doubles; and the errors are characterized as hitting the net or going out. Only in the 1970s have I seen a subjective process introduced (namely, the division between forced and unforced errors).
However I Googled "placement", and what I found does not clearly suggest a clean winner:
Wimbledontennis.co.uk:
Placement -- The ball is hit to a precisely chosen part of the court, usually one that the opponent cannot reach.
MSN Encarta:
5. sports skillful playing of ball: in a sport such as tennis or soccer, a player's skill in accurately playing the ball
Merriam Webster:
1: an act or instance of placing: as a: an accurately hit ball (as in tennis) that an opponent cannot return
I've seen Peter Bodo use the term as if to mean an accurately placed shot (it was an article comparing Nadal to Borg), not a clean winner.
And some of the placements in the stats boxes from the 70s do look inflated (eg, players like Borg get higher numbers in these boxes than in any match we've counted), as if more than clean winners are being counted. I'll post the info or the images on those when I have some time.
My suspicion is that when the forced/unforced distinction was born, the definition of placements may have changed.
Any thoughts or help appreciated. I've already taken down the placements and aces from 1920-56 and it would be great if we could just include them in our list with the contemporary matches we've been counting/researching.
