Nick Kyrgios Accepts One-Month Ban After Cocaine Test

Nick Kyrgios is free to return to professional tennis after accepting a one‑month ban for testing positive to cocaine – a suspension that, in reality, has already come and gone.

The 31-year-old, one of the sport’s most combustible and compelling figures, had been provisionally stood down since August 4. That provisional suspension officially expired on Thursday, and on Friday morning the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed the outcome: a one-month sanction, backdated, and a mandatory treatment program that will hang over the rest of his career.

If he fails to complete that program, the ban can be reinstated.

Kyrgios tested positive in June at an ATP Tour event in Mallorca, returning a sample that contained a metabolite of cocaine. He told ITIA investigators he had taken the drug while out partying on a night before the tournament began, not during competition.

ITIA officials turned to World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) scientists, who judged that the level detected was consistent with Kyrgios’ account of out-of-competition use. That distinction mattered. It allowed the integrity body to treat the case as a recreational, non-performance-related offence, rather than an in-competition doping violation.

Under WADA rules, the default sanction in such circumstances is three months. That can be cut to one if the athlete agrees to and undertakes an approved treatment program. Kyrgios took that option, accepted the one-month ban, and kept his eligibility to return as soon as the provisional period elapsed.

When news of the positive test first emerged last month, Kyrgios moved quickly to address it publicly. On social media, he called it a “huge mistake” and said he took “full responsibility”.

He also laid bare the toll of a body that can no longer keep pace with the demands of his mind.

“My body hasn’t been able to do what my mind expects it to do... Coming to terms with being near the end of my career has been harder than I ever imagined,” he wrote, framing the drug use against the backdrop of a long, painful slide from the top end of the sport.

Sympathy on tour was in short supply.

Kyrgios has spent years lashing out at fellow professionals who failed drug tests, and many remembered. Former world No.1 Simona Halep was among those to take aim after the news broke, while at the US Open this week Stefanos Tsitsipas went as far as to say Kyrgios’ drug use was widely known among people on tour.

Tsitsipas and Karen Khachanov both made it clear they did not feel sorry for their former rival.

It is a striking comedown for a player who once looked poised to bend the sport to his will. Kyrgios climbed as high as No.13 in the world rankings and, at Wimbledon in 2022, walked onto Centre Court as a men’s singles finalist. Only Novak Djokovic stopped him that afternoon.

Since then, his body has betrayed him. A string of injuries has stripped away his match fitness, his rhythm, and eventually his relevance at the sharp end of the game. The ranking list tells its own brutal story: Kyrgios has plummeted to No.918.

Now he has his eligibility back, but not his aura, not his place in the hierarchy, and not the benefit of the doubt from a locker room he once delighted in antagonising. The next move, on and off the court, is his alone.