ANDY Murray is yet to make a final decision on whether to have hip surgery but has pulled out of a tournament in Marseille next month.
The former world number one headed home from Melbourne earlier this week, following his emotional first-round defeat by Roberto Bautista Agut at the Australian Open, weighing up whether to have a resurfacing operation that could extend his career or end it completely.
Even if Murray does not have the operation, he has stated he would spend the time getting ready for a farewell appearance at Wimbledon, so it was no surprise to see a statement from the Open 13 in Marseille announcing Murray's withdrawal.
He will also miss tournaments he had committed to in Dubai and Montpellier but Murray's management insisted he has not made a final decision about surgery.
The 31-year-old strongly hinted ahead of his departure from Melbourne that he would have the operation, and was encouraged to do so by American doubles great Bob Bryan, who is playing at the Australian Open five months after undergoing the same procedure.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here