Best Golf App

What is the app for?

Three jobs, three kinds of app. Decide the job and the list gets short.

A golf app does one of three jobs. It tells you how far it is, which is a GPS watch or a phone map. It records what happened, which sensors do best because you never have to tap. Or it tells you what the shot in front of you is worth and, afterwards, where the strokes went, which is the job PinFlag is built for. Most golfers who ask which golf app to get mean the third: they want to score better, and a yardage alone does not change a decision.

The price of an app is the smaller part of the cost. Sensors are $210 to $350 before the app; a watch is a purchase and a charger. An app that runs on the phone in your pocket, with nothing to buy, is the cheapest route to real numbers, and PinFlag, WhyGolf and UpGame all take it.

If you want to score better

PinFlag prices the decision before you make it and names the leak afterwards.

On the course, PinFlag prices any target you put the aim on: the strokes gained of that spot, with your own dispersion around it and the lie read from the course map. Shot Cloud draws your launch monitor shots and past shots around the target, so the share of your spread that reaches the water is a picture of your own shots. Logging is two taps, target and result, with nothing to buy, charge or clip on, and it works with no signal.

Afterwards, Insights breaks the round down shot by shot: strokes gained by driving, approach, short game and putting, proximity by distance band and by club, a start-position table of distance by lie, three-putt frequency and make rate, a heat map of your leaves, landing zones, each hole’s shot trail, and Score Killers, which totals the three-putts, two-chips, penalties and doubles that cost whole strokes. Benchmark lenses reprice the same shots against Tour, Scratch or a handicap level.

WhyGolf also prices a shot before the swing; it names the target it thinks you should use and charges nothing to begin with. PinFlag draws your real dispersion on the hole, reads the lie from the course, records the target and the result of every shot so your dispersion is measured from real rounds, and costs $14.99 a month with every feature included.

Distances on your wrist

A watch answers how far it is; PinFlag answers what the shot is worth, with the distance included.

Garmin and Golfshot put yardages on the wrist, and 18Birdies puts a GPS map and a scorecard on the phone. PinFlag shows the distance to the pin you placed and to any target too, and adds the number a yardage cannot give you: the strokes gained of aiming there. Many golfers carry both, the watch for the yardage and PinFlag for the decision.

Sensors that log for you

Sensors capture the shot without a tap and report after the round; PinFlag logs it in two taps and prices it first.

Arccos sells sensors at $249.99 or the Air unit at $349.99, Shot Scope sells a V5 watch at $209.99 with no subscription after it, and Golfshot can track automatically from an Apple Watch. What the hardware buys is the logging. What PinFlag’s two taps buy is the target placed before the swing, which is what lets the app price the shot before you hit it, and a record of where you aimed as well as where the ball finished.