Overhaul the scoring? Have players wear numbers? Here's how Billie Jean King would change tennis

Billie Jean King was an instrumental figure in building the sport of professional tennis to where it is today. But, to move it into the future, the 80-year-old has some big ideas.

"People ask me all the time about the future of the game we all love, and what, if anything, I would change about it if I could," King captioned a video shared this week to her social media channels. "So, here are my thoughts. Some of these may surprise you."

Namely, the International Tennis Hall of Famer said that she "cannot stand" the sport's scoring system, that it should be overhauled to something more straightforward, and that men and women should play the same number of sets.

"I think it's harder to get new people into the sport, particularly young people," she confessed. "I think we should get rid of 15, 30, 40, game. We should have one, two, three four. If you have to win by two then at three-all, do two points in a row or whatever. But get rid of 15, 30, 40 game."

"I definitely want two out of three sets, OK?" she added. "Or we have to play the same amount. Men and the women, because you get paid by media content and the women always get shorted on the content because of it."

Read more: Billie Jean King to be awarded historic Congressional Gold Medal

In addition to the way the sport is played, King has thoughts about how those who compete in it should be marketed. The 39-time Grand Slam champion said tennis should take a lesson from team sports including basketball, baseball and football, and have players wear match kits with their name and a number.

"We need to promote our players like every other sport does," she said.

King's opinions elicited a lot of chatter online, with fans on X, formerly Twitter chiming in with their own takes on what they'd change or keep the same. Meanwhile, former world No. 1 Andy Roddick said on Tennis Channel Live that he was not "much of a fan" of shortening matches to best-of-three in particular, while Paul Annacone and Mark Knowles liked the idea of innovating apparel, but also cited the complexity of individual players' clothing contracts as a hindrance.

"Especially later on in tournaments," Roddick said. "You look at Slams, where it's tough scheduling the first week of a Slam, but by the end, you need the extended format just to fill hours. If we can offer for TV contracts eight hours of tennis versus five hours of tennis, eight hours ... is worth more value.

"I'm scared to disagree with Billie Jean, but I would [keep it the way it is]."