10 Best Golf GPS Apps

So far you thought your smartphone could only help you book a tee time or find directions to the course but now your smartphone’s GPS technology and one of the great golf apps to get an aerial view of each hole, identify your location on the turf, and decide on the club to get the best shot. A golf GPS provides you all the knowledge and data at your fingertips.

The best golf GPS apps provide a map of each hole, marked with doglegs and hazards between you and the hole, pinpoints your exact location, the accurate distance to the front, back, and middle of the green and may have scorekeeping and statistical measures too. Top level apps not only track shot distance, but also keep track of the players' scores, and measure key statistics. Ensure your app has these features to benefit your game and help you shoot lower scores. 

Here are the top ten apps with their features enlisted to help you make this important choice.

pinpoint golf

With the Pinpoint golf GPS app, you can track your strokes gained stats, and know your areas for improvement. It can help you analyse your golf game, identify the areas for improvement, and track your progress. With Pinpoint, each shot is tracked easily and precisely, so that you can compare the detailed specifics of your game, against an average pro, an average 5 handicap, or any other baseline. It helps you enter 18-holes with perfect accuracy, and takes less than 5 minutes, either while you are playing or after you are through with your game. Pinpoint Golf is essentially based on the extremely popular and advanced Strokes Gained statistic  which is used in PGA Tour tournaments. It aggregates your strokes gained through the rounds, to give you deep insights into all the areas of your game. With Pinpoint Golf you know where you can pick up strokes, know where to focus your practice and know how you're improving.

Golfshot
The Golfshot app has free and Pro features and is available for Apple, Apple Watch, Android, and Android Wear. The free GPS version features great data for personal improvement such as your inputs to track each shot you hit on the course, which club you were using, keeps the score of up to four players, your distance to the center of the green, reviews statistics, and checks golf news. The Golfshot Pro requires you to be a member, and has games, leaderboards, and many other features. Giving the real-time distances to the center of the green, the back edge, the front, it also informs the player of all the hazards on 40,000 courses and more. It is your seasoned caddie, giving you “on-the-spot” club recommendations based on your lie. You can zoom in on the full-color, birds-eye-view map of the course with Pro or adjust your view for a full 3D display of the hole. Other membership services from Shotzoom can also be paired with it, to help with golf instruction.

Arccos Caddie
Working with Arccos' Smart Sensors, Arccos Caddie offers great data to help you play your best golf. It advices like a real caddie on what club or strategy to use on holes, automatically tracks your shots, gives full GPS distances taking into account the wind speed, direction and elevation. Logging upwards of five rounds, allows Arccos to get familiar with your game, giving accurate information. Once your round is over, it gives an in-depth insight into performance through the strokes-gained algorithm allowing you to practise more efficiently in the areas where you actually lose shots, for improving your game.

Hole19
Hole19 is a free, high-quality golf GPS app available on Apple and Android mobile devices and watches. It has an excellent user interface and intuitive, stylish design and comes with a premium stat-tracking function. It helps the player view their distance to the front, center, and back of the green on many a turf, giving a bird’s eye satellite image of the course that lets them see the hazards, the doglegs, and any other challenges. It has an excellent and professional scorecard function. It also enables you to book times, and tie your game easily into social media making it fun, free, and helpful for your game.

Motocaddy GPS App
Free to use, the Motocaddy GPS App offers key distances such as front, middle and back yardages, hazard information and hole data like flyovers for more than 40,000 courses around the world. Redesigned well since its initial launch, it has an incredible life saving AED and CPR features for golfers in the UK and Ireland, has the ability to track stats, with accurate yardages and is solid and user friendly.

Golflogix

A hugely popular golf app, GolfLogix has added a feature that enables the golfers to see the green as they would in a video game or during a Masters broadcast, with a topographical,3D, and in-depth map of each green. Available through the Apple or Google Play stores, it is among the most downloaded ever. It features more than 8,000 golf courses and has many of the fairway features of other GPS apps. With its unique Putt Breaks feature you can click the location of your ball on the smartphone screen, and drag the box to the spot where you want to hit, on the green. It displays an accurate close-up map of the green, created by GolfLogix with laser scanners. The zoom-able 3D map has arrows indicating the direction and location of all the contours of the green. It comes with a free trial and can improve your short game immensely. This app gives you data about comparatively unknown golf courses as well.

Blast Golf Swing Analyzer
The Blast Golf Swing Analyzer uses individual sensors on each club to help you understand exactly how well you're hitting. It uses a sensor that attaches to the end of any golf club and uses GPS technology to track your golf balls and measure data so that you can analyze your performance, and identify your weaknesses. Once set up, the entire system is hands-free and delivers the recorded data to your device in real-time. It enables you to look at slow-motion playback videos of your swing to see a variety of metrics, including total stroke time, swing speed, attack angle, tempo, and more. Sensors are small, lightweight, and fit on all club sizes. It also features a training center where you can learn what each metric means and get tips and drills from PGA and Tour professionals. It enables you to share videos of your metrics on your social networks, and with your trainer, for further assessment.

Rapsodo Mobile Launch Monitor
A great GPS app, it allows golfers to analyze their shot shape, review their launch angle, and understand the ball's location. It also tracks the averages of each club in your bag and gives professional-grade accuracy on all their swing metrics. Coming with a launch stand that connects to your smartphone to store all your data and video playbacks, it only syncs with iOS devices and can only be used in dry weather conditions.

TheGrint
This fun and easy-to-use golf GPS app keeps tracking your handicap simple. The app has a free Golf Handicap Tracker providing valid handicaps for USGA-registered golf clubs. Thus, you can instantly find your friends' or your handicaps, and set for yourselves, a concrete goal. It keeps the score easily through its simple interface within the app and uses the "scorecard picture service" to turn your rough handwritten scorecard into a digital record. Using its live leaderboard feature, you can even compare your live scores to others’. It not only tracks complex stats with precise accuracy but can also give you an average GIR percentage. It also features a GPS component, allowing golfers to see their location on a bird's-eye view, displaying satellite photos of every hole, and giving them the distance to the front, back, and center of the green and the hazards as well. It features thousands of golf courses and takes just two days to add new ones upon request.

Shot Tracer
Available for Apple and Android phones, Shot Tracer fills the gap between the premium app subscriptions and the free options. It works with data or internet connections. Costing only a few dollars, it offers a suite of helpful features delivering all critical golf GPS capabilities. It traces the shots on a 3D map in more than 30,000 courses, enables the users to take videos of their shots and creates a trailing effect so that they can review them for any weaknesses, and records the score on their customizable scorecards. It creates a strobe motion effect of actual ball rolls, and makes your ball clearly visible on the ball flights, to help your putting.