Andy Murray has called for more female coaches at both the ATP and WTA Tours as he says the current gender disparity is 'surprising'.

Former world No. 1 Murray can attribute quite a bit of his success in the sport to female coaches. He has worked with his mother Judy Murray since his childhood and has admitted that he still asks her for advice even after his career reached the top ranks.

The Brit then worked with two-time Grand Slam champion Amelie Mauresmo between 2014 and 2016. During this time, he beat Rafael Nadal for the first time on clay at the 2015 Madrid Open and reached his fifth Australian Open final, where he lost to Novak Djokovic. 

During an interaction on the Citi Open Instagram, Murray called for the sport to have more female representation in coaching,

"It is something that I've found surprising across both tours, but particularly on the women's tour. Like how few female coaches there are," he said before adding,

"I think it's about time that the WTA had an initiative to try and help with this. Hopefully, those numbers increase because it's a very small amount. Certainly across the men's tours. And that's something that needs to change." 

In order to reinforce his statement, Murray spoke of how important his mother's influence has been throughout his career for both himself and his brother Jamie Murray,

"Me and my brother were very fortunate growing up that our mother was, is still, a tennis coach. We grew up with our mom coaching us and helping us. And she's still, you know, no all the time, but we will still chat to and speak to her about our games and our careers."

Moreover, he also talked about how passionate his mother is about getting more women involved not only in playing tennis but in coaching as well,

"She's someone that I've spoken to about this and she's been unbelievably passionate about getting girls into tennis, but also the female coaching side of things and trying to get more female coaches involved in the sport."