ITIA cuts Nick Kyrgios's cocaine ban to one month after an out-of-competition finding

The International Tennis Integrity Agency said Nick Kyrgios has accepted and served a one-month suspension after a sample taken at the ATP event in Mallorca in June tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a cocaine metabolite. He had been provisionally suspended since 4 August. The agency accepted that the use happened outside competition. The ban ended on 3 September, subject to him finishing an approved treatment programme, which made him eligible to play again from 4 September.

WADA rules set a three-month ban as the starting point for social use of cocaine, cannabis, MDMA or heroin when the agency agrees the use was out of competition. That term falls to one month if the athlete enters a treatment programme the ITIA accepts. Kyrgios did so. Had the same metabolite been treated as in-competition use, the range would have run up to four years.

Kyrgios told investigators the cocaine was taken on a night out before he was due to play in Mallorca. The ITIA asked an independent scientist at a WADA-accredited laboratory. That expert said the explanation fit the concentration found in the sample. On that advice the agency classified the use as out of competition.

The 31-year-old, runner-up at Wimbledon in 2022, lost his first match in Mallorca to Adam Walton. He forfeits the ranking points from that event and prize money the ITIA puts at 6,570 euros, about US$7,650. He is free to enter tournaments again once the programme conditions are met.

When the provisional ban became public he posted that he had made a "huge mistake" and took responsibility. He said years of injury had worn him down and that facing the end of a career had been harder than he expected. He apologised to fans, family, sponsors and to children who follow him.

The outcome is lighter than the two-year ban Dan Evans received in 2017 for cocaine, later cut to one year after officials accepted his account of contamination. Rules on recreational drugs have moved since then. The present WADA schedule is what produced the one-month term.

Kyrgios has been a draw and a disciplinary case for a decade. This file is narrower. It is a laboratory result, a classification fight about timing, and a reduced sanction that tracks the letter of the code. The ITIA published the finding on 3 September. The tennis calendar did not wait. He can now ask for a wild card or a qualifying place where the rules allow it.

What the statement does not do is restore the Mallorca points or the appearance fees that vanished with the provisional ban. Those are gone. The live question is whether any tour event in the next month wants him in the draw while the treatment programme is still running. That is a booking decision, not a tribunal one.