foodworms.net for designers and web developers

Airfare from Portland, Oregon to Monterey, California: $280. Seven nights in The Lodge at Pebble Beach: $6,475. Seven rounds of golf at Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, and The Links at Spanish Bay: $2,665. Two twelve golf balls: $80. Playing golf at the west frontier’s finest courses on a Macworld expense account, in order to review all of the iPhone golf-related applications: priceless.

Product:TeeShot Rating CompanyTeeShot Live.com Price as rated$20 Related Software Articles Review: Golf scoring applications for iPhone Apple’s Remote app even better than we thought Mobile executives spar over iPhone Review: TripLog/1040 for iPhone Review: NowLocal for iPhone Recent iPhone Central Posts Review: Golf scoring applications for iPhone Apple’s Remote app even better than we thought Review: TripLog/1040 because iPhone iPhone Central hearthstone View all Macworld blogs

That, at minutest, was in what condition the scenario played out in my head when I suggested to my boss that I review every golf-related appliance useful for the iPhone. As of today, that’s seven different applications (nowhere near the 18 versions of Sudoku that Dan Frakes recently worked his way through). All of these programs are related to helping you track a round of golf; the same even provides distance information for tracking shots during your round of golf. Given that most of these apps aren’t free, and some cost $20 a pop, we thought it would have existence useful to be well received a look at all seven programs, and then look at the best of the group in further detail.

The reality of such a project, of course, was much different than my dream scenario outlined aloft—plenteous probable certain credit card commercials that may have served as my inspiration. In those commercials, you never see the reality of the credit card customers fainting when they open their huge bills at the end of the month. In my being, I did most of my testing of the iPhone’s golf scoring applications time seated in my home or walking about the nearness (to pretend usage while playing). I did, however, take the rise above others pick out towards a brisk of golf at a local course, to observe how it (and the iPhone’s battery) would hold up to the rigors of real-world use.

Desired features

While golf is a relatively sincere game—place club behind ball, swing club, say bad words, repeat—keeping score can actually be somewhat tangled skein. For harvested land player, you may want to track strokes and putts per hole, indicate whether their drive hit the fairway or not, track any penalty strokes by reason of balls hit out of bounds or into the water, and keep track of any wagers between the group members. It would also be nice to store notes for each hole on a course—tips on which clubs to hit, which side of the fairway to target, etc. Ideally, all of this information should be tracked (and presented with statistics) over time, so you can gauge your progress. In addition, a golf scoring program should have being able to save a group of courses (using manually-entered or downloaded course data) you typically play on, along through names and handicap knowledge of facts for the players you usually play with.

None of the available programs do every part of of these things—in fact, not a part of them can track wagers at all. Of the remaining criteria, cropped land program handles at least some number of them, with varying degrees of success. Overall, though, none of the seven programs available scores an ace in the province of golf scoring on the iPhone—they whole have shortcomings towards someone who’s great enough about golf to be in the market for something to replace their old-fashioned scorecard. With that related, two programs stood abroad from the rest—one because it takes a different approach to golf scoring, and one because it’s just better than the rest. Before we get to the winners, though, let’s look at the other players.

The contenders

Here’s a brief overview of each of the five golf scoring programs available today that didn’t make the cut for a full review.

From left to right: Birdie, Golf-Ace, Golf Memoir, Golf Tracker, and Hey What’s the Golf Score? Click the image toward a larger interpretation.

Birdie ($19)

At first glance, Birdie looks parallel a very good entry into this region. However, after using it for a few hours, I found myself frustrated with certain features of the program. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Birdie is the score entry technique. Birdie uses a slider that new wine be moved left (model) or right (enlarge) for each stroke on a hole. So if you’ve got four players in your group, and you all take a seven on your club’s tough par five, you’ll be sliding your finger to the right a total of 28 times, just for one retreat! While the slider looks nice on the screen, a set of simple plus and minus buttons would be much faster and less stressful on your index finger.

Birdie does have some unique features in this group—it’s the only program that includes a timer as far as concerns use when chase. lost balls, and it includes your score in gross, net, and Stableford formats. You be possible to also send your final scorecard out by e-mail, which is very useful

With just a few tweaks, I think Birdie could be a strong antagonist in this group, but viewed like it stands now, other programs are easier and faster to use.

Golf-Ace ($20)

The score entry rule used in Golf-Ace is very well done—it’s super fast to use, and incredibly intuitive. However, the program lacks much in the way of statistics, and I experienced some bugs and crashes during my testing.

The developer has an update that’s already been submitted to Apple (on July 6th) for approval. Based on the release notes for the update, many of the bugs I encountered will be addressed once the update is released. Unfortunately, it’s not clear at this point when the update will be made available through Apple. Once it is, and assuming the update addresses the noted issues, Golf-Ace will become a strong contestant in this nook.

Golf Memoir ($5)

While Golf Memoir somewhat works as a replacement for the basic pencil and scorecard, the reality is that it’s much easier to use the scorecard than it is to use this program. The main screen looks promising, by a note to embark a course name, and an Invite Friends section listing people (seemingly in random order) from your contacts database. However, inviting the masses to join your round of golf doesn’t seem to do anything at all—there’s no change in the scoring screens, nor are you given the chance to election the people you’ve invited to ask them to play. I’m not sure I see the point of this critical feature.

To me, this program really doesn’t be stirred taste it was apt for general release—the company’s website consists of a half-dozen sentences and a broken image link, there are features (such as the Invite Friends bit) that don’t seem to work at all, and features that should be in even the most basic of golf scoring programs (such as savable course information) are missing.

Golf Tracker ($5)

Golf Tracker is one more program that has each unfinished be perceived to it. The ocean mask has but individual button—New Round—that takes you to a data entry screen for your modern round of golf. In the Course section, you can enter a new course by hand, but you can’t download course information from the net. Creating courses is time consuming, and they’re not editable nor deletable when done—one time entered, the career remain aye, complete by any typos you made.

Entering your score on a hole is relatively fast, though in some degree annoying—you tap-room a small box next to your name, that then brings up a full-screen overlay with buttons labeled from 1 to 10; tap a button to enter that register, and the full-screen overlay disappears. It’s quick enough, but it seems allied overkill to bring in a full-screen overlay to enter a pure number—a row of buttons would turn off the same result without the visual interruption.

Golf Tracker is light forward features, though it works in a moderate degree well (once you’ve manually entered your courses) for tracking scores.

Hey, What’s the Golf Score? ($10)

This program, like a couple of the others, feels unfinished in many ways. Entering process data, for instance, is quite frustrating. After entering the basic course information, you then be delivered of to tap on a hole number to note the par and yardage for that hole. However, you can’t just enter those values on the first screen you reach—you must first tap an arrow next to Par, then practice a scroller to select that hole’s par account (which goes from equivalence 1 to par 9, so you could, I guess, enter putt-putt courses). You then tap Select, tap an arrow nearest to Yards, and then inscribe the yardage using three different sliders—one for each finger’s breadth! Click Select when done, then repeat the entire process for the next hole.

When you’re scoring a round, the process is similar—tap an arrow next to a player’s appellation, use a scroller to select the score (which maxes at 9), then tap Select to go back to the previous screen and repeat for the next player. Between the data entry difficulties and the lost features, I can’t attract favor to Hey, What’s the Golf Score in its current form; there are better alternatives available.

Golf scoring done differently

iYardage (Free)

iYardage is a a part exceptional app in this collection, in that keeping score isn’t truly its main purpose. Instead, its designed to help you beaten path your progress during a round, including yardage information in opposition to eddish. shot. It doesn’t do this with any sort of advanced GPS or cell phone stronghold triangulation. Instead, it uses course maps that be favored with been drawn to gradation, and you then literally drag your shot (on the map) from its starting point to where it wound up. At that point, you can see exactly in what condition far your tee shot went, and in what way many yards are left to the pin. (Pin and tee positions be able to be set by simply dragging the marker to the as it should be blot on the map.) The program records each shot location, so you can review your round in the future.

Flip your iPhone sideways, and you’ve got a scorecard, complete with a putt in opposition to, along with indicators for a fairway hit, green in regulation, and up-and-down. You see nine holes at a time on the scorecard, but unfortunately, there’s no total for the round—you’ll have to add the two halves together yourself.

Because of the penury for these customized maps, there are only a maniple of courses presently available. This is, by far, the biggest drawback to the program. Unless you’re playing Poipu Bay (Hawaii), or Pebble Beach, Poplar Creek, or Metro Golf Links (all in California), you won’t be able to use iYardage. The developers, though, have posted instructions on how to use a Windows PC (or virtual Windows on an Intel Mac) and a free NASA program to submit and upload your recognize courses.

This map constitution process isn’t trivial, but the preference of available courses should be growing in the future. I plan on working cessation the task for one of our local courses, and then trying iYardage out on the course to see how well it certainly works—potentially, it could replace an expensive GPS-based range verdict machine. Note that iYardage can excepting that track one player’s round.

The best of the bunch

Tee Shot’s entry screen for both hole is not straitened and fast to use.

TeeShot ($20)

At $20, TeeShot is tied with Golf-Ace as the most expensive program of the bunch. In this case, though, you really carry on get what you pay for, because it’s also the best of the bunch.

Course data can be entered in any of four ways: there’s a live search feature to find and download courses from the web, you can enter hole accusation as you play, you be able to use the very good built-in course editor (and that time upload your finished course to the web), or you can use the free CourseBuilder in succession the Mac to enter data for a enumerate of courses at once, which you then upload to the web and download to TeeShot on your phone. CourseBuilder is really easy to use, and makes creating entries on this account that all your local courses about as simple as possible. Because users everywhere are creating and uploading courses, the population of available menstrual flux is large and growing daily.

When you choose to download a path from the web, Safari launches and displays TeeShot’s course download page. Specify your search fields, tap Search, then click attached the course in the results list that you’d like to download. Tap a couple more buttons, and you’re back in TeeShot, with the new course downloaded and ready for use. Unfortunately, you can only download one course at a time, so you’ll repeat this process whenever downloading multiple courses.

TeeShot is a one-player application—so much so that you can’t even pierce your entitle or handicap. You just start a round, and then start recording your scores. TeeShot can vestige strokes and putts (with simple plus/less buttons), fairways hit (and missed left or right), and penalty strokes. But if that’s not enough detail, you have power to shot-by-shot detail—what one. includes club used, yardage covered, the result (fairway, new, in the hole, etc.), and if the shot incurred a penalty or not—on this account that every single shot on each hole on the course.

Completed rounds can be reviewed at any time, including all of the hole-by-hole detail. There isn’t, however, a traditional scorecard view showing pars, birdies, and bogies. (The summary screen for the round is be concluded, nevertheless it’s not as easy to know fully as a scorecard, and doesn’t include totals.) Instead, a Round Details screen will tell you the undivided strokes, putts, fairways hit, forfeiture strokes, and greens in rule, in addition to the duration of the round . You can see these stats as you play, overmuch, including a timer that displays just how long the round is taking.

For the real statistics junkies, a Statistics screen displays a ton of cumulative results—rounds played, total strokes and putts, stroke averages per hole type, and the total number of birdies, pars, eagles, up through the infamous (and way too common on my cards) “triple bogey+.” There’s no per-course statistics, however, but even as it is, these statistics make ready accusation you can use to help improve your game.

The biggest shortcoming of TeeShot is that it’s a one-player application; the ability to track scores because a foursome would be a nice addition. I’d furthermore find to one’s mind to see a notes field, both for holes in continuance the course (“Stay left off the tee here”) and for a given shot on a retreat (“Pull hooked the drive; nice!”).

Out on the course

My scorecard from Red Tail Golf.

I tested TeeShot with an 18 hole round at a nearby municipal course, Red Tail Golf Club. At the risk of embarrassing myself, you can see the first part of my scorecard at right—notice the indicators showing whether or not I strike against the fairway (F), or missed left or right (the arrows). Nine over par for the first six holes isn’t great, but hey, it’s been about a year since I last played!

Data for the course was available for download from the cobweb, so no data entry was required. I found the program easy to use while playing—even though I walked the course and carried my clubs on my back. I kept my iPhone—protected with a full-coverage leather case—in my posterior portion pocket. If you’re going to walk and carry a phone, more sort of heavy-duty case is exceedingly recommended. The iPhone is light enough that I didn’t likewise notice its presence even during the time that swinging the club.

At first, I had some troubles with double-counting strokes, but that was due to user error (when entering shot-by-shot knowledge of facts, those strokes are automatically added to your total, to such a degree you don’t need to furthermore enter them separately). After I figured that part out, the program worked flawlessly. Battery life wasn’t a problem—at the end of the round (4.75 hours, according to TeeShot), I’d but lost maybe 1/10th of the battery indicator on my year-old iPhone. (I entered shot-by-shot information for most every hovel, not righteous my score.) During the round, I was in addition checking e-mail occasionally, and I made and received a test call, right to see if that would mess up TeeShot (it didn’t). I was impressed at how well the battery held up to regular (if brief) use over nearly five hours, especially given my phone is running on a year-old battery.

TeeShot came through my real-world criterion with flying colors. Compared to an old-fashioned scorecard, TeeShot was in reality easier to use, and the program tracks a ton of interesting information approximately your round. Now, if I could just get out enough to use some of that data to improve my game!

Conclusion

Overall, whether you’re going to pervert with money just one golf scoring application, TeeShot is the cream of the existing gather. When compared to other programs in the App Store, $20 seems expensive. When compared with the cost of a round of golf, or even that of a dozen golf balls, it’s really not much at all–especially for something that works this well. Over time, I think we’ll see improvements in all the apps I’ve covered here, and I’m looking forward to “round two” of these programs to see which they have to offer.