Search and load courses online

Setting up a course by hand with holes, tees and ratings takes time. In the course list you will now find "Search Online" under "Import". The list shows the courses from nicergolfjournal.ch, those of your country first. You filter by country and search by name, club or location. One tap on "Load" is all it takes, and the course is ready for recording rounds.

You do not need an account. The list is only loaded when you open the window, and the app sends nothing in the process. Without a connection it shows the most recently loaded list.

Compare courses you already have

If a course is already in the app, the button reads "Compare". The app compares the file with your course and adds only what is missing, such as an extra tee or a rating. Your existing values stay untouched, so played rounds keep using the course definition they were played on. The details are in the manual chapter on course data.

Verified course data

For this version we went through the entire collection. Every course has been checked against an official source: the club's scorecard, its handicap table or the federation's data. Courses whose details we could not confirm have been removed. The collection is smaller as a result, but Course Rating, Slope and par are right. The focus is on Switzerland and Germany. The course data is published under the Open Database License and is free to download.

If you spot an error or your course is missing, we are glad to hear from you.

Your Golf Year: the season review

The analysis now includes "Your Golf Year". The portrait card shows rounds, courses and holes played, your best round, the course of your Handicap Index, putts, GIR and FIR compared with the previous year, and the year's achievements. If values are missing, for instance because you do not record putts, others move up so the card stays complete.

You can share the card or save it as an image on the Mac. Name and Handicap Index can be hidden. The image is only created when you share, nothing leaves your device before that. The review is available from three rounds in a year, and you can choose the year. On iPhone the rounds list points to it once between October and January.

Further changes

The iPhone now opens on the Rounds tab, where you most often begin. From this version on, the Mac app is built for Macs with Apple silicon only. On Intel Macs version 1.4.1 remains usable, your data is preserved and can be moved to a new Mac via iCloud or a backup.

Achievements: your golf story in 36 badges

The Analysis view has a new category called "Achievements". It shows 36 badges in five groups, from your first birdie and break milestones to streaks such as six consecutive months with at least one round. All badges are visible from the start, earned ones carry the date of the triggering round, open ones state their condition. All existing rounds count retroactively, and everything is computed on your device.

Comparing against your handicap class

Twelve analysis cards can now be measured against the average of your handicap class instead of the previous period. The benchmark is built from recorded rounds of other players in your class, not from what your handicap promises. An index reflects only the best 8 of your last 20 rounds. Where the values come from and how the app processes them is explained in the FAQ and the manual chapter on the Analysis view.

Nine-hole rounds on 18-hole courses

When creating a round you now simply pick front 9 or back 9. Separate nine-hole layouts are no longer needed for this. With official nine-hole ratings, now recordable per tee, the round becomes fully handicap-relevant. Without them the app approximates the net result and clearly marks it with ≈. Existing rounds can be converted to nine-hole rounds afterwards.

More improvements

Weather and course conditions are now captured through icon choices instead of free text, and adverse conditions feed into the round assessment. Hole sets can carry their own hole numbering, for example 10 to 18 for a manually created back nine. Courses can be retired, 0 putts (chip-in) can be recorded on both platforms, and on the Mac the results window opens instantly. Settings gain "Send Feedback", a direct line via a prepared email, still with no account and no data collection.

One note: the consistency check is now equally strict on iPhone and Mac. A few older rounds may show a review hint. Your data itself does not change.

Version 1.3.1: polish after the big update

The first update fixed what had surfaced after 1.3. The app was unresponsive for about a minute once after updating because every round was being recalculated. That calculation now runs in the background and the app stays usable. The app also warns you when creating a layout if stroke indexes are duplicated or missing, since such gaps distribute handicap strokes incorrectly and make net and Stableford scores look better than they are. Several texts that were fixed to German or English are now translated into all five languages, and "Slope" is called Slope in French too, just like GIR or fairway.

Version 1.3.2: more robust importing, safer iCloud sync

The second update focuses on the places where data enters the app from outside. Backups and course files are now checked before they are read: oversized or broken files are rejected, and the message names the affected field. When one of your devices restores a backup for the whole account, your other devices now report it instead of silently rebuilding their data. The automatic matching of duplicate players now waits until the iCloud import has finished and can no longer catch real rounds. And extreme values in the data can no longer crash the app.

Both updates are free for everyone who owns the app. As always: buy once, no subscription, no account.

A short read on every round

Once a round is complete, the round view shows a section called “Round Insights” with up to four statements in plain sentences. Things like “Holes with a greenside bunker cost you 1.5 strokes more than the rest” or “Best GIR rate of your recent rounds”. It compares against your last ten rounds and names strengths just as readily as weaknesses.

Everything is calculated on your device. Nothing is sent to a service, and there are no recurring costs. An assessment needs at least three earlier rounds – below that the section stays hidden rather than claiming a trend from two rounds.

Two new details per hole

Alongside strokes and putts you can now record whether you found a greenside bunker and which way a missed fairway went. Both are on by default and can be switched off in Settings. Anything already recorded is always kept and still counts towards your stats.

Fairway dispersion and bunker cost

Fairway dispersion shows how your missed fairways split between left and right. It is the one stat that points at a cause rather than a result: “You hit 35 percent” says less than “You miss right 72 percent of the time”. Bunker cost shows how many strokes a hole with a greenside bunker costs you on average compared to the rest.

Putting, measured properly

Average putts per hole is misleading. Miss a lot of greens, chip close, and you often need a single putt – your putting average drops even though you played worse. You could improve it by letting your long game get worse. You now get average putts on GIR holes, plus the one-putt rate split by whether the green was hit.

Where you actually lose shots

The Holes category used to show absolute scores, say 3.8 on a par 3 and 5.9 on a par 5. That made it hard to see where most shots go. It now shows the deviation from par, so +0.8 against +0.9, and the numbers are directly comparable. The same applies to the front and back nine.

A correction for greens in regulation

The automatic GIR detection required exactly the expected number of strokes instead of at most that number. A par 5 reached in two therefore did not count as a green in regulation and ended up in the scrambling calculation instead. Your GIR rate may rise and your scrambling rate fall once rounds are saved again. Picked-up holes are now also preserved when restoring from a backup file.