Songfacts®:

• This song finds Lorde singing about the changes in her life following her success. Despite the track's title, the New Zealander doesn't actually play tennis. "I've always been really fascinated by the visual concept of the tennis court," she told MTV News. "Then also there's a tennis court in my hometown where me and my friends would hang out when we were kids, right up until we were teenagers, and that was just a symbol that felt kind of nostalgic to me."
• The song debuted at #1 on the New Zealand Top 40 singles chart. It joined "Royals," "The Love Club" and "Swingin' Party" in the Top 20, making Lorde the first New Zealand artist to have four songs in the Top 20 of her country's singles chart at one time.
• This song, along with the other Pure Heroine tracks, was produced by Joel Little, the former frontman of the pop-punk group Goodnight Nurse. Little recalled to Billboard magazine how this song found Lorde's songwriting maturing. "Up until that point, she would bring lyrics and we would take inspiration from there as to where to go with the music," he explained. "But this was one where I started putting the music together and we came up with melodies over the top, and she wrote to the melody. As she was developing in songwriting, that became more of an option."
  
  "That song was one where we had everything except the chorus," Little continued. "She was sitting in the back of the room while I was working on the music and she was saying, 'I think I've got a chorus idea.' I asked, 'Can I hear it?' and she said, 'No, no, no.' She wouldn't sing it to me and then once she had it, she basically sang the entire chorus as you hear it now. I was like, 'Holy s--t, this is seriously good.' This was the first time she had this fully formed, amazing idea for a chorus. This is, I don't know how long into the process, but it was when I was like, 'This girl is going to be an amazing songwriter, or has turned into one in a really short amount of time.' Then I just added the 'yeahs' and we tweaked a couple things here and there."
• Lorde has synesthesia, a condition that can make you see sounds as colors. During a Q&A on Tumblr she revealed that when she first wrote "Tennis Court," it was so boringly tan it made her feel sick. Then they worked out a pre-chorus and it turned green, which was much better.
• The B-side to the "Tennis Court" single is "Swingin' Party," a remake of a Replacements song on their fourth studio album, Tim (1985).