What we’re building next

NEXTPRO

Reading the green

Putting is where most amateurs actually lose their shots, and it is the part of the round the app says least about. Let's show you the line you should be putting to avoid that three-putt.

NEXT

Import a file of rounds, on the website

Typing in twenty rounds one at a time is a chore nobody finishes. Sign in on the website, upload a CSV — date, course, tee, gross or all eighteen holes — and check anything it could not match before it saves. On the site rather than in the app: a spreadsheet wants a keyboard and a wide table, not a phone. The same rules as a round typed in: your handicap and your stats, never a leaderboard.

EXPLORING

Clubs that run their own page

Every course page on the site is currently written by us, from data. A club should be able to claim its own — correct what is wrong, add what we do not hold, and see the leaderboard of rounds actually played there. Good for them, better data for everyone else, and a reason for a club to link to us rather than the other way around.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORING

Notes on every hole

Do not go left. Club down off this tee. The one thing you told yourself last time and forgot by the time you got back. A note per hole, per course, shown when you reach that hole and nowhere else. Small, and the kind of thing people keep an app for.

EXPLORING

Your round on the lock screen

Hole, par, score and running total, visible without unlocking the phone. The phone is in a pocket for four hours and comes out only to be tapped — it should answer the one question you have before it is unlocked. Live Activities on iPhone; an ongoing notification on Android, which does most of the same job with less ceremony.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORING

Score by voice

Five, two putts. Said, not tapped — gloves on, hands wet, phone in the bag. The screen reader work already made every control announceable; this is the same idea in the other direction. The hard part is not the recognition, it is being confident enough in what was heard to write it to a card without a confirmation that defeats the point.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORING

Follow a society day as it happens

The organiser watches cards come in from the clubhouse. A shared tournament link already shows the table; this is the table updating live, with who is on which hole, for the person who is not out on the course. The web page for a board exists — this is making it move.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORING

An API for people who build things

Societies run spreadsheets, clubs run their own websites, and a handful of people have asked whether they can pull their rounds out. A read-only API for your own data — rounds, scores, handicap — plus a way for a club to read its own leaderboard, would let all of that happen without us building each of it. It is exploring rather than next because the interesting questions are about who is allowed to read what, not about the endpoints.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORING

Two pieces of hardware

One for your bag, one for your home. Neither is a golf ball, both are early, and both will be described here properly when there is something worth describing rather than something worth teasing. In the meantime the smart-ball research that came before them is published in full, drawings and bench footage included.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORING

Your real club distances

Tap at the ball, tap where you find it, and your phone measures the shot. Enough of those and the app knows your seven iron carries 148 and that you miss it right — no sensors, no extra kit, just the phone already in your pocket.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORINGPRO

A caddie that knows what's in your bag

“152 to the middle. Your six goes 157 and you've missed it right four of the last five times.” Needs the distances above to exist first.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORING

Distance to the green

The thing people ask us for most. Rather than licensing course maps, we think we can learn where greens are from the rounds people already play — which costs nothing and gets more accurate the more golf is played on it. It might not work, and we would rather try that than put it behind a subscription.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORINGPRO

Coaching that tracks a fault over months

The app names a fault in your swing today. It should be able to tell you in November whether it is still there — “your early extension appeared in four of five swings in July and one of six this month.”

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

EXPLORING

Society and club competitions

Recurring tournaments, divisions, an order of merit across a season, and a dashboard for whoever runs it. Built for the person who organises the golf rather than just plays it.

A stretch — the shape of this may change, or it may not happen at all.

SHIPPED

Your handicap over time

A chart of where your index has been after every round, on the Insights screen, next to the trends the app already showed for putts and score. It starts from the handicap you declared if you entered one, and marks the moments that matter: your best ever, the first time under 20, 15 and 10, and the round that moved it most. Those three thresholds and a full-shot drop in one round are trophies now, and the leaderboard shows how each player's index has moved.

SHIPPED

Bring your old scorecards

A handicap index needs three rounds, and everyone who joins already has more than three behind them — on paper, in a drawer, in another app. Add a past round from the home screen: pick the course and tee, choose the date, and enter every hole or just the gross score. They count for your handicap and your own stats and nothing else — course leaderboards and tournaments stay for rounds played in the app. Nothing is marked official; they are your rounds, and they count for exactly what your rounds count for.

SHIPPED

The app in your language

French, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, chosen in Settings or picked up from the phone. Every string in the app — no screen left half-translated. Course names and scorecards stay as the club publishes them. Japanese matters most: the app holds 2,030 courses there, which was the widest gap between courses held and language spoken.

SHIPPEDPRO

Range Coach talks back

Prop the phone on your bag and it coaches out loud. Every five swings it says one thing — how far your shoulders are turning, and the single fault that showed up most in that batch, or that the shape is good and to keep it. Spoken, because the phone is four paces away and a line on its screen helps nobody mid-session. There is a mute button if you would rather it did not.

SHIPPEDPRO

A review at the end of every practice

Finish used to close the screen and that was that. Now the session is saved and your coach writes a short review — what went well, what to work on, and goals for next time — comparing it with your previous sessions and the plan you are on. Read aloud and shown before you leave, and kept under the session in your practice history. Tempo from the watch and swing shape from the camera land in the same review whichever device you ended on.

SHIPPED

Trophies that tell you

Earn one and you hear about it, instead of finding it later in a tab. Fourteen of them, every one derived from a real scorecard rather than awarded for turning up.

SHIPPED

Share a round properly

A shared round now previews as the round — the course, the score, the birdies — rather than a bare link. It publishes a summary and not the card, so a group round does not expose the hole-by-hole scores of people who never tapped share.

SHIPPED

Practice streaks, counted weekly

Counted in weeks, because golf is not daily and a daily streak would break in week one. Any week with a round, a range session or a swing filmed keeps it going, and there is a grace week so you are not reset to zero on a Monday morning for not having played yet.

SHIPPED

Start with the handicap you already have

A handicap index needs three rounds before it means anything, which left anyone who already plays off a club handicap looking at a dash for their first month — and playing off scratch in a net competition. You can now enter the handicap you hold, and it fills the gap until your own cards take over. It never overrides them: three rounds in, the number worked out from your golf wins permanently, and it is never what course leaderboards or public tournaments are scored on.

SHIPPED

Every course, with its scorecard, on the web

3,119 courses now have a page of their own — par, yardage and stroke index for every hole, from every tee, with the course rating and slope. Not a directory of names and postcodes: the card itself, for the courses we hold a real one for. The other sixteen thousand in the app are listed but do not have a page, because a page with a name and nothing else is not worth reading.

SHIPPED

Scoring that survives a bad signal

Every stroke is saved on the phone first and sent second. Close the app in a valley and reopen it in the car park: the card is exactly where you left it, and it goes as soon as there is a signal. A small line under the scorecard says so while it waits. Your own card, that is — the other players in a group round still need a connection to appear.

SHIPPED

Know when you've been overtaken

Someone passes you on a board and you hear about it — who, where you are now, how far off the lead, and how long is left. Only when a rival actually moves: your own worse round does not count as being passed, and a tie is not a pass. No more than once every six hours per board, and it can be muted on its own.

SHIPPED

Scoring from a Wear OS watch

Start or continue a round from your wrist, step shots and putts, see the running total and end the round — the same job the Apple Watch app does, built from scratch for Wear OS rather than adapted. Your phone keeps the scorecard, so stats, handicap and leaderboards work exactly as before. It is its own app on the Play Store, installed alongside the phone app.

SHIPPED

Usable with a screen reader, and with big text

Scoring a round no longer needs good eyesight or steady hands. Every control announces what it is and what it does, the score stepper reads as a single adjustable value rather than three separate buttons, tap targets are big enough to hit in gloves, and the layout holds at the largest text size iOS and Android offer. Scores and positions are announced as they change, so a round can be scored with the screen off. This was overdue rather than new.

SHIPPED

A public status page

Live at status.thecaddy.co.uk. The service was already monitored by checks that look at whether answers are actually correct rather than whether a server responds — that is now visible to you rather than only to us, and linked from the footer of every page.

SHIPPED

Android, properly

The Android app was stuck on an old version for a long time, and saying so was the honest answer while it was true. It is now on the same version as the iPhone app — scoring, courses, leaderboards, tournaments and trophies, with Pro available to buy for the first time. Sign in with Google came with it. A Wear OS watch app followed, so the wrist is covered on both.

SHIPPEDPRO

Range Coach — live coaching on your wrist

Pick a session length and your Apple Watch works the range with you. It reads every swing and watches runs of them rather than scoring one at a time: three quick in a row and it tells you to count it out; tempo drifting as you tire and it says so. Haptics pace you through a slow rehearsal swing, faster as you drift off your line.

SHIPPEDPRO

Your phone watches your swing shape

Prop your phone on your bag. The watch tells it when you swung, so it keeps only those few seconds and analyses your turn, sway and posture — the things a wrist genuinely cannot measure. You never touch the phone during a session.

SHIPPED

Practice history on the web

Every session, the trend across them, and the question underneath: is the practice actually changing your scoring. Your rounds before you started practising, against your rounds since.

SHIPPED

Course leaderboards and tournaments

Every course runs a live board. Play a round and you're on it. You can also host your own — private with a code, or a club competition anyone playing there can join.

SHIPPED

A scorecard that reads like a scorecard

Birdies circled, bogeys boxed, par on every hole, front and back nine totals — the way a real card marks them.

SHIPPEDPRO

AI swing analysis from one video

Film a single swing on your phone and get named faults, ranked by severity, each with a specific drill.

SHIPPEDPRO

Four-week coaching plans

Pick break 100, 90 or 80. The plan is built around the part of your game actually costing you shots.

SHIPPEDPRO

Strokes gained

Where the shots went, in strokes — off the tee, approach, around the green and putting.

SHIPPED

19,400+ courses across the UK, US, Japan and Europe

With the right pars and stroke index for each tee, so your handicap means something.

SHIPPED

Apple Watch scoring

Score from your wrist with your phone in the bag. Start a round on either device.