One of the best features of the iPhone is the ability to lookup directions and contact information for businesses, stores, and restaurants using the native Google Maps application. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a dedicated app like the Maps application, that leveraged the power of the iPhone’s GPS and allowed you to lookup a golf course by location, course name, zip code, or city?
That is the what Carpe Diem Ventures has set out to do with its Where To Golf iPhone application that searches over 19,000 golf courses in the U.S.A and 2,500 in Canada.
How To Use Where To Golf?
Using the Where To Golf app is very straightforward and simple to use, just launch the application and your presented with four options for looking up a golf course: My Location, Course Name, Zip Code, and City. Depending on which option you select the results come back very quickly over the 3G and Edge data networks.
The search results screen lists the Course name, Price, Course Rating, Distance from your location, Number of Holes and whether several main course features are available such as Driving Range, Restaurant, Bar and Carts. I found the icons for these course features to be a nice touch, but a little hard to distinguish as available or not available. In case you’re unable to find your course listed, you can always add it to the application by filling out as much of the course information as possible.
When you select a course from the results your taken to the course home screen which displays distance from your current location, type of course (public/resort/etc), address, and access to their website. Other information provided on the home screen includes green fee prices for weekend, weekday, and twilight where applicable, current weather conditions for the course, and tee box’s par, yardage, rating and slope. This is all very helpful information, especially when your looking for golf course when traveling.
The Details portion of the application identified by the “?” icon, provides you with information about: Course Access-Tee Time Reservations Accepted and earliest tee time available, discounts, guests-private/public, Walking Allowed; Training Facilities- does the course have a driving range, putting green, chipping area, golf school, or golf pro; Amenities-hours of operation for the bar, restaurant, and pro shop, beverage cart available, etc; Rentals-does the course offer golf club rentals, carts, pull carts, and caddies; Layout provides a course description-Year built, course designer, fairway grass type, green grass type, number of water hazards, bunkers, and yardage markers.
When your ready to call the golf course you just press the phone icon to call the golf course directly. The app will automatically call the golf course without you having to dial the number, which is nice.
Looking for directions is as easy as pressing the map icon, which launches the iPhone’s native Map application with the course location. This is a nice feature, but it would be great if you didn’t have to exit the Where To Golf application to get directions.
To read a course review, you just select the star icon from the app menu. If there are no reviews you can write a review for the course from this screen as well.
How Well Did the Where To Golf Application Work?
I tested the application using the four options for finding a golf course with some mixed results. The My Location, Zip Code, and City option worked the best of the four options, returning valid results. The only problem I noticed is that I kept finding duplicate results, which I’m not sure why. Part of the problem might be that people are unable to find a course by name and are adding it to the application.
The search by name option seemed to be the least reliable of the four options. When I searched for “TPC Sawgrass”, the results came back as “No Results Found”, but when I put in just “TPC”, I got most of the TPC golf courses across the country, except Sawgrass. I was left a little puzzled by this. I think it has a lot to do with the query that the app uses to look up by name. For example, when I searched for the “Tam” golf course it turned up results like “Tampa Bay” and the course I was looking for. The search by name could use a little refinement so its more accurate.
One of the strongest features of the application is all the detailed course information it supposed to provide you and in my tests, I found the course details information to be missing for almost all the fields and when it was provided, it was incorrect. I was looking at the course information for The Glenview National 9, in Glenview, IL and it lists the incorrect weekend and weekday green fees ($5-$10 higher than they are) for that course, and all the details information is incomplete. I thought this was an anomaly, but other golf courses I play had incorrect green fees (higher) and incomplete course information. This was a bit of a let down for an application that could be extremely useful for any golfer with an iPhone.
The two features that works really well are the Phone and Directions feature. Both performed well in my tests without any problems at all and are the bright spot of what could have been a terrific iPhone application.
Overall, I think that the Where To Golf iPhone application has the potential to be the must have golf application once they improve its search and course details information. For $1.99 it’s worth trying out and you might have better luck than I did.
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do you have google maps of california or other states showing all the golf courses
Great review!
The golf course locater app will always impress me, its such a great idea. I’ve also seen an iphone app to count your strokes, give you your score, and it also allows you to enter items like the course rating and slope…
There is a new course finder App for UK courses called igolfguideuk. It even has a weather report for the course! Well worth £1.79
I have noticed that similar apps are also beginning to pop up for Android phones although I’m not sure any are as good as this.
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