ONE of tennis' GOATs has called for the sport to CHANGE its iconic scoring system. Billie Jean King, 80, is one of the biggest names in the history of tennis. She won 39 Grand Slams - 12 in singles, 16 in doubles and 11 in mixed - and was one of the founding nine members of the WTA Tour.
However, she has certainly ruffled a few feathers among the traditionalists by suggesting how tennis can continue to be popular among future generations - especially amid the rise in padel. And that included ripping up the famous and unique 15-30-40 scoring format - which is thought to have started by using a clock face to keep tabs - and scrapping using "love" to mean zero. King told BBC Sport : "I want to make it easy for fans.
"I think it should be 1-2-3-4 not 15-love, 30-love. "If you are a kid - I didn't come from tennis - what the heck does that mean? "If we want to get eight, nine, 10, 11, 12-year-old children involved in our sport, we have to make it accessible to them - not to a 60-year-old fan." Padel, though, uses the same scoring system as tennis and has not stopped a huge wave of new players and fans.
CASINO SPECIAL - BEST CASINO WELCOME OFFERS King did not elaborate on the points, games and sets format - which can throw up incredible drama and mini-battles within the context of epic matches. But her suggestion of the major shift to simplify the scoring did not go down well with supporters who labelled the call "ridiculous". One said: "Ridiculous idea! I started watching tennis a.