Torben Ulrich, tennis player and jazz musician who set his son Lars on the heavy metal road

He played 102 Davis Cup ties for Denmark and was a free-jazz clarinettist, music writer, artist and avant-garde filmmaker

Torben Ulrich, who has died aged 95, could certainly be said to have had a varied career. The father of Lars Ulrich, drummer with Metallica, gods of heavy metal, he was a writer, jazz clarinettist, artist and avant-garde filmmaker – and a tennis player who appeared in 102 Davis Cup matches for Denmark.
He was born in Copenhagen on October 4 1928 to Ulla, née Meyer, and the Davis Cup and Olympic tennis player Einer Ulrich; his younger brother Jorgen would also go on to play in the Davis Cup, and the three Ulriches played 230 matches between them. Torben played on the international circuit from his late teens, twice winning the Antwerp International title in the 1950s, as well as the Stuttgart Open in 1953.
He cut a singular figure on tour, with his ponytail and penchant for health foods and yoga. His advice to aspiring players was simple: “Watch the ball, bend your knees, and remember there are people suffering.”
As the sport entered its Open era, Ulrich turned professional at the remarkably advanced age of 40, signing up with the World Championship Tennis circuit alongside the likes of John Newcombe, Tony Roche and Britain’s Roger Taylor. He reached the third round of the US Open in 1969, losing to the great Pancho Gonzales. “Pancho gives great happiness,” he said afterwards. “It is good to watch the master.”
He then joined the seniors circuit, becoming world No 1 in 1976, and the following year he was one of the oldest players in Davis Cup history when he turned out for Denmark aged 49. One magazine cover that year labelled him “The Ageless Guru of Tennis”.
Playing for most of his career as an amateur, he had also had to work for a living, and in the late 1940s he was apprenticed at Reuters, going on to write for tennis magazines and for the Danish papers Information and Politiken. He also began writing on jazz as well as co-editing the literary magazine Bazar.
In the 1960s he worked for the daily paper BT, writing about jazz and other music, and about general cultural topics. He later returned to BT, and in 2003 Jazz, Bold & Buddhisme, an anthology of his journalism, was published.
In the 1950s he had played clarinet with a trad-jazz band, but later in life his work became increasingly experimental. In the 2000s he began working with the Copenhagen free-jazz trio Clinch, and in 2005 he founded another improvisational group, Instead Of.
Between 2009 and 2014 he released three albums, beginning with Suddenly, Sound: 21 Songlines for Piano, Drainpipe, Etc, with the pianist Søren Kjærgaard. In 2021, aged 92, he released the jazz record Oakland Moments; Cello, Voice, Reuniting, Rejoicing, a collaboration with the cellist Lori Goldstein.
Ulrich began painting in 1971, and went on to make a series of pieces using the imprints of tennis balls, with titles like Imprints of Practice; they have been exhibited around the world in, among other places, New York, Paris and Los Angeles.
He appeared in several documentaries by the experimental filmmaker Jørgen Leth, Motion Picture (1969) and Moments of Play (1986), as well as several other avant-garde films.
Ulrich married Lone Sylvester-Hvid, and in 1963 they had a son, Lars, and when the boy was nine his father secured tickets for a Deep Purple concert that was being held in the same Copenhagen arena as one of his tennis tournaments. The gig had such a stirring effect on Lars that he was soon asking for a drum kit (he was also a promising tennis player before taking a musical path).
“My dad was always around music,” Lars told Rolling Stone in 1995. “He was hanging out with Sonny Rollins, Don Cherry, Dexter Gordon. Dexter Gordon was my godfather. I used to play with Neneh Cherry when we were little kids. Her stepfather, Don Cherry, lived, like, six houses from where we lived in Copenhagen.”
Metallica went on to conquer the world of heavy rock, and Torben gained a reputation as the band’s most uncompromising critic. In Some Kind of Monster, the 2004 documentary about Lars and Co, Torben gained huge credibility among fans for telling it it like it is when he was asked for his opinion of a new song during a writing session. “I would say, delete that,” he replied.
Torben and Lone parted but never divorced. She died in 1998, and he is survived by their son Lars.
Torben Ulrich, born October 4 1928, died December 20 2023