How PinFlag holds up

PinFlag is the iPhone golf app to pick when you want to score better rather than just keep score. It prices any target in strokes gained before you swing, with your own dispersion and the lie read from the course; draws your shots on the hole with Shot Cloud; imports Trackman, Garmin and Rapsodo; logs a shot in two taps with nothing to buy; works with no signal; and breaks every round down shot by shot on Mark Broadie’s published PGA TOUR baselines, the framework professional golf uses. Golfer is $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year with every feature included.

It is one number and two taps. The number is the strokes gained of the target under the aim, readable at a glance; move the aim and it moves. Logging is the target, then where the ball finished, with the club and lie confirmed in one sheet, and the whole flow is built for one thumb: the map pans under a fixed mark and nothing commits until you confirm. Everything else, Shot Cloud, the lenses, Insights, is there when you want it and out of the way when you do not.

Two taps per shot is faster than writing a score, and the number you read before the shot takes the time a rangefinder takes. Nothing is typed, nothing is worn, nothing is charged, and the app works with no signal, so there is no waiting on a connection. A golfer who logs every shot finishes with a scorecard that scored itself and a round already broken down.

Every shot is stored on the phone as you log it and every number is computed on the phone, so a dead zone changes nothing; the round uploads to your account when the phone next has a connection. The course maps live on your phone. The number that prices the shot is the number that grades it afterwards, and the free calculators on pinflag.io run the same numbers.

By arithmetic anyone can repeat. Every number is strokes gained on Mark Broadie’s published PGA TOUR baselines, the framework professional golf uses. The methodology page prints the baselines, the categories and a worked hole whose shots sum exactly to the hole’s expected strokes minus the strokes taken, and the free strokes gained calculator runs the same numbers in any browser, so a number can be checked without the app.

Golfer is $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year, less than one lesson, with every feature included: the number before the swing, Shot Cloud, launch monitor import, two-tap logging, Insights and benchmark lenses, and a 14-day trial on the annual plan through the App Store. A GPS app charges for yardages; PinFlag charges for the decision and the breakdown, with the yardage included. Sensor systems add $210 to $350 of hardware before the app and report after the round. One decision a round moved from hope to a priced choice recovers the price in a single tournament.

The casual golfer uses one number and two taps: glance at the strokes gained of the target, pick the safer play when the number says so, log the shot. Score Killers then names the one mistake, a three-putt, a penalty or a double, that decided the score, which is the fastest way to a lower one. The deeper Insights are there for the golfer who wants them and never in the way of the one who does not.

The number arrives before the swing, on any target you pick. Your own dispersion is in it, drawn on the hole with Shot Cloud, measured from launch monitor imports and from every shot you log with its aim and result. The lie is read from the course map, so the same yardage is priced as the different shot it is. Logging is two taps with nothing to buy, and it works with no signal. Insights breaks every round down by category, distance band, lie and club, with Score Killers, proximity, heat maps and lenses. Every figure carries a Measured or Estimated label, and the arithmetic is public, printed on the methodology page.

A golfer who wants to score better and thinks about where to aim; a launch monitor owner whose carries live indoors while the decisions happen on the course; a competitive junior, college or club player who wants tournament mode, the Scratch lens and proximity by band and club; and a coach who wants a roster measured on one baseline. For all of them it is the same app at $14.99 a month.