Features

The hole from above, with the numbers that matter

A satellite view of the hole you are standing on, with the carry to the bunker, the three green numbers, and a layup point you can drop anywhere and measure both ways. On the courses ParPath has mapped.

What is actually on the map

Open the map on a mapped hole and you get satellite imagery framed on the hole you are playing, drawn from coordinates stored for that specific course. Four separate layers sit on top of the picture.

• The green. Three points, not one: the front edge, the center and the back edge, which is what makes three different yardages possible.
• The tee. The anchor for every yardage when you are not standing on the hole yet.
• Hazards. Individual markers for water, bunkers and trees, each one tappable.
• Terrain zones. Polygons for fairway, rough and bunker, which is the layer that lets the app work out whether a spot you are aiming at is actually in the short grass.

Your own position is on there too, as long as you have granted location access and you are on the hole. Along the top sits the ParPath strip for that hole, so the color and the target score are in the same view as the yardage. The point of that layout is not decoration: the yardage answers "how far", and the plan answers "how much are you allowed to risk here", and those two questions get answered in the same glance or they get answered badly.

Front, middle and back

The three numbers sit in a row at the bottom of the screen: FRONT on the left, the big center-of-green number in the middle, BACK on the right. They are measured from your GPS position when you are on the hole, and from the tee when you are looking ahead at a hole you have not reached yet.

The spread between front and back is the number most golfers ignore and then pay for. On a green that is thirty yards deep, a front pin and a back pin are two full clubs apart, and the middle number that both of your playing partners are quoting is wrong for both of them. If you have never used the three numbers deliberately, the habit is: club for the middle, then adjust toward the front number when short is safe and toward the back when the trouble is short.

When the hole has a meaningful elevation change, the numbers switch to the adjusted figure with the raw distance printed underneath as "actual", and a PLAYS LIKE badge appears above the row with the adjustment. Tap the row and you get the full breakdown of where that adjustment came from, which is covered on plays-like distance.

Carries to trouble

Tap any hazard marker and the app puts up a strip with the hazard's name and the yards from your reference point to it. Standing on the tee, that is your carry number. Standing in the fairway, it is the number to the greenside bunker you are about to fly.

This is the number a laser struggles with, because a laser needs to see the target and a fairway bunker on a dogleg is often behind a tree line or over a crest. The overhead view has no such problem: the bunker complex over the hill is right there on the picture, and one tap tells you whether it is 210 to carry or 240.

Layup points, and measuring both halves of the hole

Tap anywhere on the hole and the app drops a target there. Two lines appear: one from you to the target, one from the target on to the green. Each line gets its own pill with its own yardage, so you can see both halves of the hole at once.

That is what turns a yardage tool into a planning tool. You are not asking "how far to the green", you are asking "if I put it there, what have I got left". Drag the target until the second number is a distance you like, then look at the first number and pick the club that gets you there. Plan backwards from your favorite wedge distance, which is the whole idea behind playing a par 5 properly.

Each pill is tappable for its own plays-like breakdown, so the layup shot and the approach are analyzed separately rather than sharing one number. If you drop the target on the green itself, the second pill disappears, because the carry already is the shot to the pin.

On holes where fairway polygons exist, the app can also place a suggested landing spot for you: the green center on a par 3, and on a par 4 or par 5 the middle of the fairway at roughly driving distance, falling back to a point along the tee-to-green line when it cannot find fairway there. That suggestion uses a fixed driving distance rather than yours, so treat it as a starting point and drag it to where you actually hit it.

The circle around your target

When you place a target, a circle appears around it. Its radius is set by how far the shot is: about 35 yards for a full driver, tightening down to a few yards for a short wedge. It is a picture of the fact that you are not aiming at a point, you are aiming at an area, and the area is bigger than the gap you were planning to thread.

The app then reads what is inside that circle against the terrain layer and the hazards, colors the circle by risk, and lists any water or out of bounds that falls inside it as a short warning, in the form "Water 8y Left". It also reports a strokes gained figure for the position you have chosen, so two candidate targets can be compared rather than argued about. Strokes gained explains what that number is measuring.

The circle is sized from shot length, so treat it as a starting shape for the decision: where the trouble sits relative to a typical shot of that length. It gets sharper as your own shot data builds up behind it.

Coverage: this is per course, not universal

Hole maps are built course by course and stored per course. Coverage is growing, and the app tells you where your course stands before you tee off. If it is not mapped yet, you can ask us for it and the rest of the round still works.

If the course you are playing has no map, opening the map gives you a screen that says so, along with a button to be notified when that course does get mapped. Everything else in the app still works. You still get scoring, you still get your game plan, you still get the round in your history. What you do not get is a yardage, a carry number or a target, because there is nothing to measure against.

Check your own course before you head out, and check a course you have never played before you drive there. New courses get added over time, and the notify button is the way to get told when yours arrives.