Former world No 1 Andy Roddick has given his verdict on Jack Draper’s retirement at the Barcelona Open and addressed when the Brit could return to the tour.

Draper retired due to a knee injury when trailing 1-4 in the third set of his opening round match against Tomas Martin Etcheverry in Barcelona.

In an Instagram post after his retirement, Draper wrote: “Sad to retire in Barcelona. I’ve tried hard these last months to stay positive and give my all.

“It will take time but I will work my way out of this. Thank you for all the support throughout this process!”

Speaking on his Served podcast, Roddick expressed concern about Draper’s ongoing battles with his body.

“We don’t know what it is yet. What you don’t want is the stops and starts for someone this talented, who adds a lot of potential to the sport of tennis,” said the 2003 US Open champion

“We know what his top line looks like. Last year, he was maybe the third best player in the world [from] January to May. I don’t think that’s crazy.

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“One thing that’s definitely true is when you get hurt and when you get in a cycle of injury, injuries tend to happen more often.

“Not necessarily in Draper’s case, because one is an elbow and one is a knee, so it’s different parts of the body.

“But when you see someone who has an injured right knee and they come back and all of a sudden, there’s s a left ankle turn — all that s*** is connected somehow.

“I just hope that he can kind of get out of this. We don’t know what the diagnosis is.

“It didn’t sound like he was saying: ‘I hope to be back next week or in a couple of weeks’. Just judging by what he put out.

“If it’s not great, is he circling the grass-court season? You’re not going to come back, your first tournament back, and play three out of five sets on clay, I don’t think. I don’t think that’s smart when you’ve had injuries the last year. We’ll see.”

Draper, who is ranked 28th, will have 650 points to defend at the upcoming Madrid Open after he was a runner-up at the event last year.

Roddick, though, asserted that this should not be a consideration as he urged Draper to forget about his ranking.

“If I’m his coach, don’t even mention points to defend,” Roddick said.

“Right now, you know what I would do; I would say, ‘I don’t care what Earth thinks you’re ranked; we’re deducting those points right now, you’re ranked 90’.

“And we’re going to have the mentality coming back where we’re going to earn our lunch every day. Defending points with someone who’s been hurt, it’s like: delete.

“World Tour Finals is probably off the table [for Draper] unless something amazing happens. Just get rid of it, get it off. I don’t want to hear about that.”

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