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France's Richard Gasquet is free to return to the ATP Tour after his ban for a positive cocaine test was reduced.

The world number 32 was provisionally suspended in May after a sample he had provided in March in Miami tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.

"It's a happy end of a painful ordeal. I'm delighted to be able to start competing again. Now it's back to tennis," the 22-year-old told French radio station Europe 1.

The International Tennis Federation said Gasquet's "inadvertent contamination" in a nightclub the night before his scheduled match meant a 12-month suspension would be disproportionate.

It has instead handed him a ban of two months and 15 days, which expired on Wednesday.

Gasquet had always claimed his innocence and said he had a hair sample tested by an independent lab "which showed no trace of cocaine".

"I have never taken any cocaine in my life, I can swear it," he said before the ITF disciplinary commission hearing.

"I saw a person who was at that party and this person told me he/she was offered cocaine that night, that there was a lot of cocaine.

"I did not see it. Had I seen it, I would have left that nightclub."

Reuters