Best Golf Apps for Apple Watch 2024

Best golf apps for Apple Watch

The best golf apps for Apple Watch keep score, track stats, act as a virtual caddie, book tee times, and lots more.

Whilst it can’t quite compete with the best specialist golf watches, the Apple Watch is still good for golfers, particularly those who already own an Apple Watch and want to make the most of it on the golf course, or people who want a golf watch that can do a whole lot more.

With the best golf apps for Apple Watch, you can keep score, track your stats, have a virtual caddie on your wrist, book tee times, and lots more.

If you’d still prefer to have a dedicated golf watch, check out our breakdown of the Best GPS Golf Watches.

Not got an Apple Watch but still want some of the best golf apps available? Check out our review of the best golf apps.

If you’re in the market for other equipment that can help make playing golf just that little bit easier, check out our reviews of the Best Golf Launch Monitors, Best Golf Rangefinders, and Best Golf Training Aids.

EXPLAINED: How we test golf equipment

Best Golf Apps for Apple Watch

18Birdies

RRP: Free (Premium £7.99/week / £19.99/month / £99/year)

The 18Birdies golf app for Apple Watch gives you distances with GPS, keeps score, tracks your handicap, measures the distances of your shots, lets you play fun side games, and plenty more.

You can track your golf stats, including fairways hit, greens in regulation, putts, chips and more, all from your wrist and without having to pay a subscription fee.

Speaking of a subscription fee, the premium option offers advanced stats including strokes gained, suggested clubs and “plays like” distances with elevation and weather factored in, and even AI coaching and swing recognition. This premium service is £99 per year.

18Birdies free features:

– GPS rangefinder: Find your distance from anywhere on the course.

– Stats & round history: Track your stats in a few taps and view all your past rounds.

– Auto hole switching

– Side games, including Skins, Wolf, Dots, and Points

– Tee times: Book a slot at over 6,000 courses

– Sweepstakes: Win prizes including golf trips and gear from top brands in monthly draws.

– Social feed: Share swing videos, discuss equipment and celebrate holes-in-one with golfers from around the world.

18Birdies premium features:

– Caddy+: Get personalized distance and club recommendations based on elevation, temperature, humidity, wind data and more.

– Advanced stats: Analyze your golf game with even more charts and custom filters.

– Shot tracking: Track and analyse your shots based on distance, shot shape, quality, and power.

– Blind shot compass: Know where the flag is, even when you can’t see the green.

– Strokes gained: Find out where you are losing or gaining strokes against the field.

– Live weather map: Get a detailed Doppler radar view of the weather at the course and in the surrounding area.

DOWNLOAD: 18Birdies app for Apple Watch

V1 Game

RRP: Free (Membership tiers range from £1.99/month to £11.99/month and £20/year to £119.99/year)

The V1 Game for Apple Watch is another app that can serve as your GPS rangefinder, caddie, and shot tracker.

The automatic shot detection means you can just focus on your game, safe in the knowledge your shots and stats are being collected in the background.

The Virtual Caddie uses your performance history to recommend clubs and aiming targets so you can make better decisions on the course. It also analyses your performance data, highlighting your strengths and weaknesses in strokes gained so you know what you need to work on to make the most rapid improvements in your game. The statistics on offer include: strokes gained, shot patterns, club distances, scoring, greens in regulation (GIR), fairways in regulation (FIR), scrambling, putts per green, putts per GIR, estimated handicap, and more.

V1 Game covers over 40,000 golf courses worldwide and offers aerial satellite views, helping you plan better shots. You can get accurate yardages to greens, tees, hazards, and landing zones, as well as manually setting the pin for precise distances.

V1 Game integrates with the Health app to launch your golf activity seamlessly with the Apple Watch and track your golf workout.

DOWNLOAD: V1 Game app for Apple Watch

Tag Heuer Golf

RRP: Free (Premium £6.99/month or £39.99/year)

Like V1 Game and 18Birdies, the Tag Heuer Golf app offers shot and score-tracking, distances to the green and hazards, club recommendations, statistics, and more, but what really sets the Tag Heuer Golf app apart is the quality of the 2D course maps you can see on your wrist.

They’re particularly helpful if you’re playing a course you’re not familiar with and could help you plot your way round much better than simply relying on yardages.

DOWNLOAD: Tag Heuer app for Apple Watch

SwingU

RRP: Free (Premium upgrades from £6.99 to £99.99)

SwingU is one of the most popular golf apps in the world, with more than six million users worldwide, and it’s easy to see why.

It’s really easy to use and offers a great depth of functions.

SwingU free features:

– GPS rangefinder that works on every course in the world, offering distances to greens and hazards

– Digital scorecard that automatically advances hole-by-hole while easily tracking your score and putts

– A calculated handicap once you’ve posted three rounds

– Shots are tracked and analysed so you can see how far you hit your clubs

– Tap the flat to get accurate distances

– Daily golf instruction from a top of top instructors

– HealthKit features are included when using the Watch on the course; e.g. track calories burned

SwingU premium features:

– “Plays like” yardages using live wind speed and elevation

– Club recommendations based on your average distances, shot tracking, wind speed and elevation

– Compare your stats versus all SwingU golfers, including your tendencies for strategic decision making

– Hole notes: record notes and reminders on each hole, helping you make better decisions next time you play

– Enhanced scorecard and stats: record scores, putts, driving accuracy, bunker play – and get detailed round summaries revealing your strengths and weaknesses, plus relative handicap for each part of the game

– Play on-course games with adjusted scoring for various formats

– Use SwingU Versus, a strokes gained platform used by over 50 tour players and more than 100 college golfers

– Green maps for over 13,000 courses

– Post-round game-improvement priority and prescribed drill from a top-100 teacher revealing where you should focus your practice time

DOWNLOAD: SwingU app for Apple Watch

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