Which club should I hit? That is all this does. Your
7 iron does not fly the same distance every day: thin mountain air, a hot
afternoon and a headwind all move it. Tell the app how far your clubs actually
go, and it does that arithmetic for you.
Five steps below. They take about ten minutes once, and then
you never do them again.
Step 1 · The numbers on screen are not yours
Right now the app is showing somebody else's bag, with somebody else's name at
the top. That is on purpose, so you can see what it looks like before you type
anything. Nothing here is your number until you put it in.
So do not trust a single figure on that table yet. Step 2 fixes it.
Step 2 · Put your own numbers in
- Tap the three lines at the top right, then Edit bag.
- Top box: put your name on the bag, so the header stops saying somebody
else's.
- Recorded at comes next, and it matters more than it looks. It means
"where was I standing when I measured these?" A launch monitor indoors is about
sea level. Your home course is whatever its altitude is. Get this wrong and
every club is wrong by the same amount.
- Now type over each club's numbers. Three per club: your soft one, your
normal one, your hard one. If you only know your normal swing, put
the same number in all three and fix it later.
- Scroll to the bottom and tap Save bag. The Save button is below all
the numbers — if you close the panel without it, nothing is kept.
Do not have real numbers? Use whatever you believe, play a round, and correct
them after. A rough bag you trust beats a perfect one you do not have.
Do not carry a club that is listed? Tap Add & reorder and clear its
name. Carry one that is missing? Same button, then + new club.
Step 3 · Save your numbers somewhere safe
Do this the day you type them in. Your numbers live on this phone and
nowhere else. There is no account and no password, which also means nobody can
get them back for you.
- Three lines → Copy bag code.
- Paste it into a note, an email to yourself, anywhere you will still have it
next year. It is one long line of text and it is your whole bag.
- New phone, or cleared your browser? Paste that line back in and everything
returns.
When the three lines button glows gold, it is telling you your numbers
have changed since your last backup.
Step 4 · Open it in a real browser
This is the one that catches most people. If a friend sent you the link in
a text, or you tapped it in Facebook, Instagram or email, you are not really in
Safari or Chrome. You are in that app's own little browser, and those block
location and the compass completely.
The symptom: you tap Use my location and nothing happens, or it says
location denied no matter how many times you allow it.
- Look for the share icon (a box with an arrow) or the ⋯
three dots, usually a corner of the screen.
- Choose Open in Safari, or Open in Chrome.
- Now do step 5, and you will never have to think about this again.
Step 5 · Make it an app on your home screen
This is not decoration. It is what keeps your numbers alive: an iPhone will
quietly delete a website's saved data after about a week of not visiting it.
Installed, it stops doing that.
On iPhone: in Safari, tap the share icon at the bottom, scroll
down, tap Add to Home Screen, then Add.
On Android: in Chrome, tap the ⋯ menu, then Add to Home
screen or Install app.
One catch, and it surprises everyone. The installed app
starts out empty — it does not inherit what you typed in the browser. So
copy your bag code first (step 3), open the new icon, and paste it in. The app
offers you a box to paste it the very first time you open it.
That is setup. Now the golf.
- Tap Use my location. Altitude, temperature, humidity and wind speed
fill themselves in.
- Type how far you are from the flag into Distance. Add the slope in feet
if you are hitting up or down a hill.
- Read the two clubs it gives you.
Reading the answer
168y plays 178y
The hill only. Uphill plays longer, downhill plays
shorter. Wind is not in this line.
Where the wind went
Into the wind, every club in the table gets shorter,
so the club it offers you is already the windy answer. Above the dial the app says
into the wind, downwind, or which way it crosses. If that line is
wrong, the dial is wrong, and so is the club.
Which way? tap the dial
A wind speed on its own tells the app nothing.
Until you place the direction, the app leaves the wind out rather than guessing,
and says so. Tap an hour, or let the compass do it.
7i 182y 4 long
The 7 iron carries 182 in today's air, which
finishes 4 yards past your number.
8i 164y 14 short
The 8 iron leaves you 14 yards short. Now
it is your call: cover the flag, or stay under it.
The wind dial
The arrow points where the wind blows, not where it comes from. Your shot
always plays to 12 o'clock. So an arrow pointing straight down at 6 is wind in
your face, and an arrow at 3 pushes the ball to your right.
Tap any hour on the dial to set the wind by hand, or let the compass do it. On a
keyboard the dial takes arrow keys.
The table underneath tells you whose numbers it is showing: your recorded ones, or
today's. If it says today's, the clubs have already been adjusted.
Aim at the pin
- Tap Aim at the pin, or tap the middle of the dial.
- Tap Follow my phone. The dial starts tracking which way you face.
- Point the top edge of the phone at the flag. Hold it flat, like a compass.
Not the camera. The top edge.
- Tap Set 12 at the pin. The dial freezes with the flag at 12.
- Read the big line: start the ball 6 yards left of the pin. The ruler under
it shows the same thing in yards, with the flag at the centre.
- The white arrow marked START is that line drawn on the dial. The dashed
line beside it is the flag. In a light wind the two nearly touch, because the
real angle is small.
Standing on the start line
Two degrees is real on the ground and impossible to eyeball. So after you set 12
at the pin, tap Sight the start line and turn slowly.
- The app counts you in: turn 4° left, then 3°, then
2°.
- When you are on it, the line says ON LINE and the START arrow lights up.
- Look up and pick something out there on that line: a bunker lip, a tree, a
patch of rough. Aim at that, not at your phone.
Sighting leaves the dial alone, so the pin stays locked while you turn. It stops
when you close the view or when the phone goes to sleep.
Locked means locked. Turn around afterwards and nothing moves, which is the point:
you walk to your ball and the answer stays put.
What this cannot tell you
Carry only. Every number is where the ball lands, never where it stops.
Roll is yours to judge.
One percentage for the whole bag. A driver truly gains a little more from
thin air than a wedge does. This treats them the same.
Hard wind is a guess. Past 20 mph across, treat the aim number as a
starting point, not an answer.
It has never seen your lie. Uphill lie, wet grass, ball above your feet,
cold ball, tight pin, water short. None of that is in here. You are still the one
playing golf.
Keeping your numbers
They live on this phone only. Nothing is sent anywhere, and there is nothing
to log into. That also means nobody can get them back for you.
- In Settings, tap Copy bag code and paste it into a note. That one line of
text is your whole bag.
- Add to Home Screen keeps your numbers alive longer on an iPhone. Careful:
the installed app opens with empty storage, so paste your code in the first time.
Giving it to someone
Settings, then Share this app. Show them the square, they point their camera
at it, done. Their numbers stay on their phone, never on yours.