A few years ago, I had just read Every Shot Counts, I had listened to several interviews Mark Broadie gave, and I was all in on strokes gained. This. I thought to myself. This is what will finally take my game over the edge. This is the data I need. I downloaded the original Golfmetrics app that computes your personal strokes gained against a standard scratch golfer, and I dutifully used it on nearly every round of golf I played.
For your shots, the original Golfmetrics app required you to input your distance from the hole and where you were on the course (tee, fairway, rough, deep rough, recovery, green). And it would remember courses so that you didn’t always have to input the hole’s total yardage off the tee if the tees were typically in the same place. The original Golfmetrics was intuitive and easy to use. It would generate reports based on your last round or last x rounds, and you could easily pull up a list of your rounds from newest to oldest. I liked it, and when watching golf and hearing talk of strokes gained, I felt in the know. I felt like I was using the correct tool to gauge my game. Total putts for the round? Fairways hit? Go back to the ’90’s, bro. We need proximity to the hole information, and we now know that all holed putts are not the same. (Though I still have a soft spot for greens in regulation as a stat. If you’re hitting greens, good things usually follow.)
I reported my rounds on the original Golfmetrics app for four years. Then, this past spring, I got an e-mail that a major update was coming and exciting changes were on the way. I didn’t pay too much attention. Then at some point in the summer, the app automatically updated to the new version.
An early warning sign was that I couldn’t log in. After exchanging a few e-mails with customer support, I got in and immediately started using the new app. I was initially impressed with the GPS map of the course and quickly was able to drag the arrow-shaped icon to where my first shot ended up. You can even set a target and get the distance to the target. But when I got to the green, things changed. That’s when the new app lost its luster. And even after multiple uses, I have not been able to embrace it.
Aside from the fairly expensive $99/year or $9.99/month price (up from around $69/year previously), there are three main things I dislike about the app. One, on the green, the app can be confusing, and it is cumbersome to enter your putts and the pin location, particularly in advanced putting mode. Two, there is a “Plays Like” feature that appears automatically and cannot be turned off. This is like having a slope feature on a rangefinder that stays on permanently; it is a violation of the Rules of Golf and unnecessary. Finally, the reports–a feature I used to enjoy–do not display as many stats as the old version and some of the stats are clearly incorrect.
In the picture at the top, you can see the screen that appears once you enter a shot on the green. It seems easy enough–either mark that you missed; you holed out; or you missed, then made the next one. When I first started using it, I accidentally marked that I had holed out on a hole. No big deal, right? Wrong, at times when I have used the app, once I have advanced to the next hole, I could not go back and edit a hole until I had marked the round complete. This happened a couple of times, and it had me flummoxed. It was distracting, and I had to abandon the app mid-round a few times. I believe the mid-round editing ability has been corrected, and even though I have gotten the hang of entering shots on the green, I still don’t love the app. If you use your GPS location, you have to first manually move the pin icon, and it can be tricky to set the distance of your putt accurately and quickly.
Prior to reaching the green, the new version is definitely better than the old–you just drag the arrow to where you are in the GPS. But on the green, I much prefer just entering that I had a 30-footer followed by a 2-footer. The dragging of the arrow and the constant popping up of the miss/hole out/miss, hole out next screen is annoying. You can also choose to enter advanced putting stats like uphill/left-to-right/misread, etc, but these are awkward and time consuming to deal with (see the screenshot below) on the green and/or on the next tee when you need to be getting ready to hit.
“Plays Like” is another bad feature in the new version of the app. Did Mark Broadie sell the app? I don’t see him wanting a feature like this. In the screenshot below, the “Plays Like” area below the distance information shows an estimate for what the distance will play like, apparently taking into account wind, temperature, and even humidity. I have covered this here and here, but you can’t use wind or slope information under the Rules of Golf. It is a violation of Rule 4.3(a)(1). I don’t think you can turn this feature off in Golfmetrics. Hence, if you want to track your strokes gained stats in a tournament (or simply play by the Rules in a casual round), you are out of luck. At the very least, this feature should be optional for each round.
Finally, the reports are also better in the original version. As late as last week, when I looked at average pars, birdies, bogeys, and doubles made, no matter what I shot, it would be 0.3 or 0.7 or some other number for all four categories. This glitch appears to have been corrected, but it makes me distrust the whole system. The new app also eliminated some stats that I used to enjoy. No longer does a performance report provide a page like this:
I particularly enjoyed the proximity-to-hole stats and the percentage comparisons to a scratch golfer. One other annoying display feature is that your most recent rounds are not shown chronologically, but are grouped by course and then chronologically, so you can’t just see a simple list of your most recent rounds amongst various courses.
Despite the GPS improvements, the drawbacks of the new Golfmetrics app coupled with the boosted price have caused me to end my subscription. I am going to go forward for the time being either using no stats or going back to the old school Y/N on the scorecard row titled GIR.
Note: Golftaco gets a commission if you buy Every Shot Counts using this link. I highly recommend reading Broadie’s book.