FREE Golf Golfshot App using Apple Watch | Review

Hi Golf Mad Family. I reviewed the Hole 19 app paired with my Apple Watch on the free version on my iPhone. I also had an app called Golfshot, so I thought I’d give it a little review, dive into it, and show you how it compared with Hole 19. This was still the free version. I decided to give it a little review and dive in.

 

First off, I fired up the app. I was at Shirland Golf and Country Club, and it found me straight away. I had a quick look through the different options it offered. Again, this was the free version, and I didn’t dive into the premium version or the subscriptions. It had statistics like Strokes Gained and Fairways, which you could collect as you went around and played. There was also Swing ID, but it looked like you needed a subscription for that one.

I had used this app probably about four or five years ago, and then for some reason, I moved on to the Hole 19 app. The practice equipment feature was there, and I inputted the yardage for the clubs back then. Those distances had gone up a little bit. My 7-iron carried about 190 now, so that was interesting.

There was a course preview feature, which was useful if you were playing a course for the first time. You could plot your way around and look at the dangers. I also used the course flyover feature, which was great. You got a view of the holes, but it didn’t show distances to the bunkers or trees. Still, the flyover gave a good overview of the holes, especially if they were blind or if you hadn’t played them before.

The course directory gave information about the course, and you could make play notes, which was another great feature. I looked at the other settings. I was using an Apple Series 3, so it was one of the older watches. One thing I noticed with the Hole 19 app was that it wouldn’t pick up the GPS from my watch, so I always had to have my phone on me. I think the later models of the Apple Watch would pick up the GPS.

I enabled the watch’s GPS and gave it a little test. It had shot-tracking features, but I didn’t use them that day since I wasn’t playing. There were lots of cool features, and some would be in the premium version. For example, there was a smart club distance feature, which tracked your clubs and suggested the right one to use, but I liked to work that out myself based on wind and other conditions.

Then I hit the start round button. I was at Shirland Golf and Country Club and used the white tees. It was pretty good that it tracked fitness data like steps and calories. The scoring system was in stroke play, and you could add matches on there as well. The imagery downloaded to my Apple Watch, and it synced. I was on the 7th tee, and it gave me the front, centre, and back yardages to the green. I liked that improvement since when I used it in the past, it only gave me the centre distance.

 

On the watch, it gave me the same distances, but I couldn’t zoom in on the green. There was an AR view, but I didn’t really need to use that. The flyover gave the handicap and par of the hole, but I couldn’t move the marker to check distances, which was a premium feature. On Hole 19, I could drag the marker down to see where the bunkers were, but I couldn’t do that here. In terms of distances from the tee, Hole 19 won.

One cool feature was that I could input the score on my watch, which I couldn’t do with Hole 19 unless I had the premium version. That saved me from having to get my phone out, and I could also input putts. The watch synced automatically to the next hole, which was nice. I walked a little bit to see if the GPS on the watch updated without my phone. The yardage adjusted as I moved, which meant it was using the watch GPS—super cool! That was a big plus for me, especially since I didn’t have to carry my phone around.

I didn’t use shot tracking much because I preferred getting my data from indoor simulators. But for someone who didn’t have access to a launch monitior, this would be very useful. The app had voice automation, and you could even ask Siri to help track your shots.

When I finished the round, I could check my stats, like Fairways hit, Greens in Regulation, and putts. The fitness data showed steps, calories, and mileage, which was a cool feature if you were tracking your steps.

 

Conclusion

Overall, I liked the fact that I could use the GPS on my Apple Watch without needing my phone. That might have made me start using Golfshot more. That was my quick overview of the Golfshot app. If you enjoyed it, hit that subscribe button on the Golf Mad Dad YouTube channel—it would be a big thank you to me and the channel. There are plenty of free apps out there to help us play smarter golf, so there was no excuse not to know our distances, that helps us hit more greens in regulation, bring our score down, and play smarter golf. And who didn’t want to shoot a lower score?

 

Happy Golfing Golf Mad Family