Andy Murray adds Montpellier tournament to his 2019 diary

Andy Murray aims to play more events in 2019 as he continues to improve after hip surgery. Picture: Julian Finney/Getty

The former world No 1 only played six tournaments this year following hip surgery. He called an early end to his season in September in a bid to play a fuller schedule next year.

He will begin his campaign at the Brisbane International as a warm-up to the Australian Open Murray pulled out of Brisbane last January before deciding to go under the knife.

The Montpellier event begins on 5 February 5. The tournament director of the Open 13 in Marseille later that month revealed last week that Murray will also play there.

Murray wrote on Facebook: “Lots of great memories playing indoors in France, looking forward to playing Open Sud de France in Montpellier for the first time next year.”

A caveat should be that Murray, whose ranking remains a lowly 263, entered a number of tournaments in 2017 that he subsequently did not play, but there are reasons to be optimistic.

The 31-year-old has been spending a lot of time working with a specialist in Philadelphia as he bids to return to something like his best form, and a recent Instagram post simply showed a tunnel with light at the end.