The serve that tore a life apart landed on a family court.
Three-quarters of the way through the first set of a friendly doubles match – husband and wife on one side of the net, daughter and son-in-law on the other – a former competitive tennis player wound up for a big serve. He estimates it at around 112km/h. Harder than anything he’d hit that day. Hard enough to change everything.
“Right after I hit the serve, I thought, wow, my shoulder hurts.”
He played on. Of course he did. Years of tennis behind him, a lifetime of sport, three swims a week, surfing, paddling. By the next set, the bravado met its limit. He could no longer hit a backhand without pain.
The match ended. The problem didn’t.
From court to clinic
Within a month, he went looking for answers. First came an X-ray, then an ultrasound. Eventually, he sat in front of an orthopaedic surgeon. The verdict: he needed surgical repair.
An MRI told the full story. A full-thickness tear of the supraspinatus tendon. Sixteen millimetres of tendon retraction. Tendinopathy. Muscle atrophy. The sort of report that explains why a once-powerful shoulder suddenly refuses to cooperate.
He turned to ACC for cover.
In January 2025, ACC turned him down.
The decision rested on advice from a clinical adviser, a physiotherapist. The recorded mechanism of injury – hitting the ball awkwardly and hurting his shoulder, an awkward overhead shot that wrenched it – did not, in the adviser’s view, reflect the kind of unexpected, high-energy force usually seen in traumatic rotator cuff tears.
Age, tendon retraction, tendinopathy, muscle changes: all, the physiotherapist argued, pointed away from a clear accident and towards degeneration.
The player – Probst – bristled. The description, he said, stripped the force from the moment. This was not a gentle social lob. This was a full-blooded serve from a man who had been hammering tennis balls since childhood.
Before that day in February 2024, he had no shoulder problems. None while swimming, none while surfing, none while paddling or playing tennis. After it, he stopped them all. He avoided pulling or lifting with his right arm. Everyday life shrank around a damaged joint.
Taking on ACC
At first, Probst fought ACC alone.
“Because it was wrong,” he said of his decision to keep pushing.
He saw more than a personal slight. He saw a system that, in his view, banked on people giving up.
“When people are trying to get away with something that is incorrect and take advantage of people’s unwillingness or inability to challenge stuff, that just gets me fired up.”
Eventually, he brought in a lawyer. The case went to review.
This time, someone listened differently.
The reviewer found that Probst’s tear was caused by the February 2024 accident, not wholly or substantially by any pre-existing condition or degenerative process. The physiotherapist’s advice, which had underpinned ACC’s original decision, came under sharp scrutiny.
Key details were missing. The adviser had not considered the mechanism of injury as Probst described it. He did not have the original ultrasound. He did not have the initial physiotherapy notes. He conducted a paper review from incomplete material.
The reviewer, by contrast, locked onto the timeline. Immediate pain after the serve. A clear, direct connection between the accident and the onset of symptoms. A man described as “incredibly active for his age” who had never reported shoulder trouble until that day.
The MRI report, the reviewer noted, did not identify moderate or severe degeneration.
“Ultimately, [the ACC physiotherapist] has misunderstood the mechanism of injury, has commented without a full clinical picture, and has not provided any reasoning on why he considers that the injury was caused wholly or substantially by degeneration, with a no more than minimal contribution by the accident event,” the decision stated.
There was another crucial distinction. Probst’s orthopaedic surgeon had examined him in person. The physiotherapist never had. On that basis, the reviewer found the surgeon better qualified to give an opinion on the tear.
ACC had to change course.
ACC under the microscope
Phil Riley, ACC’s head of service operations, acknowledged the grey areas that surround cases like this.
“Cases like Mr Probst’s, where ACC is assessing whether a condition was caused by an accident or degenerative changes can be clinically complex, and clinical professionals may reach different conclusions despite assessing the same information.”
Treating specialists matter, Riley said, but their views sit alongside other medical information, and ACC can seek more specialist advice if needed. He pointed to guidelines developed with orthopaedic specialists, designed to “help support consistent and accurate decision making”.
On the evidence ACC had at the time, including those guidelines, Riley said they “were unable to determine that Mr Probst’s condition was caused by his accident”.
The review changed that. Probst provided additional information at the hearing. This time, it was enough.
“We accept the reviewer’s decision and have approved cover and funded Mr Probst’s surgery,” Riley said.
The numbers in the background tell their own story. ACC figures show the proportion of rotator cuff surgery purchase orders declined jumped from 22% in 2024 to 35% in 2025. Across all orthopaedic surgery, declines rose from 18% to 26%.
For anyone trying to navigate the system, those percentages are not abstract. They are odds.
Riley stressed that reviews are free to lodge. Clients don’t need a lawyer; they can represent themselves or lean on an advocate, family member or other representative. ACC may contribute to review-related costs. There is also a free Navigation Service offering independent guidance and support.
For Probst, the support came later than he wanted, and at a price.
A win, with a cost
When the decision finally landed in his favour, it brought relief, not triumph.
“I was happy that the time and the money that I’d expended, and the mental effort had paid off, that you could prevail against an unjust decision.
“But it is bittersweet because it could have been done a year earlier and I could have risked further injury during that time period.”
The reviewer awarded him $1218.13 in review costs. After ACC’s contribution, he still carried $3206.87 in legal bills.
The surgery will be paid for. The lost year will not.
Probst chose to speak publicly because he kept hearing similar stories – people who believed ACC had wrongly declined their claims and either didn’t know how to fight back, or didn’t have the strength to keep going.
His message to anyone in that position is blunt.
“Challenge it.”
