The Serve That Changed Everything: Probst's Injury Battle

The serve that changed everything came on a family court, not centre court.

Midway through a friendly doubles match with his wife against his daughter and son-in-law, lifelong tennis player Probst wound up and cracked a first serve he reckons at around 112km/h. He had hit thousands like it since childhood. This one bit back.

“Right after I hit the serve, I thought, wow, my shoulder hurts.”

He played on. Competitors do. By the next set, the pain had crept from nuisance to barrier. He could no longer hit a backhand without it biting. The game finished; his tennis didn’t just pause, it stopped.

The following month, still in pain, he went looking for answers. An X-ray, an ultrasound, then a consultation with an orthopaedic surgeon. The verdict was blunt: he needed surgery.

An MRI told the full story. A full-thickness tear of the supraspinatus tendon. Sixteen millimetres of tendon retraction. Tendinopathy. Muscle atrophy. A serious injury, not a niggle.

ACC saw it differently.

In January 2025, the agency declined cover. Its clinical adviser, a physiotherapist, decided the way the injury was described – an awkward overhead shot, hitting the ball awkwardly and wrenching the shoulder – didn’t fit with the sort of unexpected, high-energy force usually linked with a traumatic rotator cuff tear.

Age, tendon retraction, tendinopathy, muscle changes: to the adviser, the file looked more like degeneration than damage from one serve. Probst bristled. The description, he argued, stripped the violence from the moment his shoulder went.

He knew his own body. Before that day he swam three times a week, surfed, paddled, played regular tennis. No shoulder issues. Then one serve, instant pain, and his sporting life went dark. Tennis gone. Swimming gone. Surfing and paddling gone. Anything that meant pulling or lifting with his right arm, off the table.

So he fought.

First, on his own. Then, when the pushback hardened, with a lawyer beside him.

“Because it was wrong,” he said of his decision to keep going. The idea that a system might bank on people giving up lit a fire in him. “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.”

The reviewer eventually agreed with him.

The decision found that the tear was caused by the accident in February 2024, not wholly or substantially by a pre-existing or degenerative process. The ACC physiotherapist, the reviewer said, had not properly factored in the mechanism of injury as Probst described it. Nor did he have the original ultrasound or initial physiotherapy notes when he formed his opinion.

Key details stood out. Immediate pain after the serve. A clear, tight link in time between the incident and the onset of symptoms. A man “incredibly active for his age” with no previous shoulder problems. The MRI, the reviewer noted, did not show 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 said.

One more point weighed heavily. Probst’s orthopaedic surgeon had physically examined him. The physiotherapist had conducted a paper review. On the question of a complex shoulder tear, the reviewer found the surgeon better placed to judge.

ACC, for its part, stressed the complexity of such cases.

ACC head of service operations Phil Riley said situations like Probst’s, where the agency must decide whether a condition stems from an accident or from degenerative change, can be clinically difficult, with different professionals drawing different conclusions from the same information.

Riley said treating specialists are important voices, but their opinions sit alongside other medical evidence, and ACC can seek further specialist input. He pointed to guidelines developed with orthopaedic specialists “to help support consistent and accurate decision making”.

“After assessing the available clinical evidence, including the guidelines, we were unable to determine that Mr Probst’s condition was caused by his accident,” he said.

At the review hearing, Probst supplied more information. This time, it landed.

“We accept the reviewer’s decision and have approved cover and funded Mr Probst’s surgery,” Riley confirmed.

Victory, but with a sting.

“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,” Probst said.

“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.

Riley underlined that reviews are free to lodge. Clients do not need a lawyer, he said, and can represent themselves or bring an advocate, family member or other representative. ACC may contribute to review-related costs and offers a free Navigation Service to provide independent guidance and support.

Behind this one case sits a sharper trend. ACC figures show the proportion of rotator cuff surgery purchase orders declined has jumped from 22% in 2024 to 35% in 2025. Across all orthopaedic surgery, the decline rate has risen from 18% to 26%.

Probst knows his story is now part of that bigger picture. He chose to speak because he kept hearing from others who believed their ACC claims had been wrongly turned down.

His message to anyone in that position is stripped of legal jargon and frustration, boiled down to one word.