Andy Murray will return to action in June at Libema Open in Netherlands

Andy Murray will return to action on 11 June at a low-level grass tournament in the Netherlands, the newly labelled Libema Open, it was revealed on Thursday. “I am looking forward to getting back on the grass and to playing in Rosmalen [s’-Hertogenbosch] for the first time,” Murray said, relieved to have recovered from the operation in January that appears to have eased a chronic hip problem.

Murray, whose last competitive match was his painful exit from the Wimbledon quarter-finals last year, added: “I’ve heard lots of good things about the tournament and the courts are meant to be very good. It’s the perfect way for me to prepare for Wimbledon.”

He is understood to be in raised spirits and put pictures on social media of his latest training camp in Nice, where he has been hitting for several days against his Scottish protégé, Aidan McHugh, and moving freely.

The ATP250 event in the Netherlands, the week after the French Open, will be a tune-up for Queen’s, where Murray has won a record five times and which will serve again as his preparation for Wimbledon.

His return ends months of agonising over his future. He was due to come back in Brisbane, before the Australian Open, but withdrew at the last minute and headed for Melbourne, where his trusted friend and renowned surgeon, John O’Donnell, performed the hip resurfacing operation, where a small sleeve is placed over the joint.

Four days after the operation, Murray was walking freely in the streets of Melbourne when he bumped into members of the British media. There was a brief exchange of pleasantries and the player who has come through many crises might have wondered if he would ever again have good news to relate.

The Libema Open [formerly the Ricoh Open] tournament director, Marcel Hunze, said: “In the past years we invested heavily in the quality of the tournament and the grass courts. The participation of the former Wimbledon champion and grasscourt specialist, Andy Murray, is a great reward.”

It is also serendipity. Murray has been in a minor quandary about where and when he would return, having thought about playing in one or both of the new LTA hardcourt tournaments, in Loughborough and Glasgow, his birthplace. But grass is the obvious place for him to start hitting in earnest again.

He has never enjoyed the transition from one surface to another and the lush summertime lawns of the All England Club, 20 minutes drive from his home in Surrey, are where he has won two of his three major titles.

In his long absence Murray has surrendered the British No 1 ranking to Kyle Edmund and slipped 29 places from the world No 1 ranking he lost to Rafael Nadal last August, although the Spaniard subsequently has had his own hip problem. He had to retire in his quarter-final in Melbourne against Marin Cilic and has been recuperating since in preparation for his return to a full European clay campaign, starting with the Monte Carlo Open on 14 April.

Roger Federer, who is also guarding minor niggles, is clinging to the No 1 spot and faltered on the hard courts of Indian Wells and Miami, before announcing he would again ignore the European clay season.

Murray, too, regarded the heavy red dust as a challenge too far. In the Netherlands where the veteran Gilles Müller won last year, he will be able to ease his way back on to the Tour, with low expectations and a lesser examination of his game.

There will probably not be much expected of him at Queen’s either – but Wimbledon will be a different situation altogether. If he comes through two weeks of competitive tests on grass, Murray will want to launch himself wholeheartedly at the title that matters to him most.

His mother, Judy, said last week her younger son is desperate to get back to the game that has been his life since he was a small boy in Dunblane. Murray turns 31 on 15 May. He wants to make the most of the time he has left in the most physical era in the history of the game.