I generally only do product reviews when I come across a golf product that I’m genuinely excited about……….and I’m naturally cynical when I’m approached to take a look at a golf product, which happens fairly frequently.

However, I’ve made an exception this time. While the creators of Mobitee, a GPS assistant for the iPhone (+ iPad & iPod), reached out to me to tell me about their freshly updated app, I quickly saw the value in what the guys at Mobitee have developed.

I’ve tried a few GPS apps on my iPhone, but the thing that stood out for me with Mobitee is the number of useful features that are integrated into one application. In addition to the ‘bread & butter’ GPS tool, Mobitee provides the following features:

Welcome Screen

• guide to approx. 25,000 courses worldwide….incl. course address, green fees and directions
• flyover of each hole at each course  (this is a pretty cool way to visualize hole layouts when playing a new course)
• club advice for each shot based on your club yardages
• interactive scorecard, with the ability to keep scores for up to 4 players (the scorecards can be shared by email after the round)

At US24.90 it’s not the cheapest iPhone golf GPS app on the market, but it’s definitely one of the most feature rich and user friendly.

Mobitee Lite Download Competition

Until 10 July 2011, if you download the free Mobitee Lite you go into the running to win up to $250 in prizes…..a pretty good way to try out Mobitee for free and give yourself a shot at collecting a prize.

Some Screenshots

Rangefinder

Scorecard

Player Details

Course Details

Bag

What started as a quick visit to the Golf Channel website to look back at the 2010 PGA Championship turned into a couple of hours online this watching The Golf Channel’s “The Golf Fix” videos…….a reasonable alternative to the golf that I’d planned to play until the wild weather rolled in.

If you haven’t already you should get over to the Golf Channel website and check them out. There are over 150 instructional videos to digest. I think I’ll get my golf fix here for awhile…..in addition to YouTube of course!

Golf Channel Dominates

Incidentally, as I was looking around online I discovered that the Golf Channel has a very impressive, and growing, share of golf content on the internet.

The Golf Channel is obviously all over general golf content, including the latest golf news, results and videos……they do a pretty good job of merging related content for major tournaments as well – for example the PGA Championship site.

However, a surprise to me was that the Golf Channel also runs many regional golf sites, including  Tucson Golf, where you can book tee times and golf vacations.

I haven’t been able to find a directory of Golf Channel ‘powered’ websites, but I’m pretty sure they number in the dozens……clearly the most dominant player in online golf content, and seemingly growing!

Just sat down to take in the first round US Open telecast and quickly discovered that I needed more than what the guys at NBC were sending me. It seems that in this age of on demand content, I’m not satisfied with sitting in front of the TV and waiting for score updates, waiting for a glimpse of a player that I’m following, waiting for the commercials to finish.

So….I usually turn to the PGA Tour website for the latest scores and detailed leaderboard, but for this year’s US Open at Pebble Beach I discovered an interactive play tracker from the official USGA website. Features of the play tracker include:

• Difficulty Map: view how difficult a hole is playing for the entire field, for each round
• Hole Grouping: view which players are currently playing a particular hole. Select a player and view their scorecard
• Hole Stats: zoom in on each hole to see a detailed hole layout, hole description and see how many birdies, pars, bogies there have been for the round
• Leaderboard: the play tracker also incorporates a leaderboard

……and just in case you’re still worried that you’re missing something you can download the USGA’s official iPhone application!

A few months ago I came across a great news website called Alltop. It describes itself as an online magazine rack, but the site essentially collects headlines from the latest stories from the best news sites and blogs that cover a particular topic, eg golf.

I generally head for PGA.com or Yahoo Sports for my golf news, but there’s plenty of other great golf content out there, and Alltop.com is a simple and easy way to find it. Check out the video below to see how it works:

One of the cool things about the site is that you can create your own Alltop page to gather content for all of the topics you’re interested in……..that’s if you have time for interests outside of golf! It’s pretty easy to set-up, but the site has a tutorial that steps you through the process.

Alltop recently enhanced its credibility by adding foundgolf.com to its list of golf sites We’re last on the list, but you gotta start somewhere!

Last November I shared a fantastic golfing experience with a couple of good mates……..seeing Tiger Woods win the Australian Masters at Kingston Heath Golf Course in Melbourne, Australia. The golf was great, Tiger was iconic (and still a role model!), the weather was perfect, the company was easy and the beer was, well beer. Our days in Melbourne could only have been more perfect if we’d managed to squeeze in a couple of rounds of golf ourselves.

Before the weekend was out we agreed that we’d return to Melbourne for the 2011 Presidents Cup, which is being hosted by the Royal Melbourne Golf Club from 14-20 November. This time we would bring our sticks and find time for a couple of rounds of golf…….or more. Our planned trip to the Presidents Cup came up in conversation while playing golf with one of my travel mates yesterday, and we agreed that we should find out when tickets go on sale so we don’t miss out. A bit premature possibly, given that the tournament is still 18 months away, but you can never be too prepared!

Anyway, while looking for information about the tournament and ticket sales, I came across the official Presidents Cup website, hosted by PGATOUR.com. The site has a heap of great information, including past results, video highlights and of course information about the 2011 Presidents Cup.

The website also shows the current qualification standings for the US and International Teams. Ten members of the 2011 U.S. Team and International Team are selected based on official earnings from the 2009 Wyndham Championship through the 2011 PGA Championship (with money earned in 2011 counting as double). The current standings are shown below.

So did I find out when tickets go on sale? No – the only information I could find was that tickets would go on sale in 2010. I have signed up to the Presidents Cup Newsletter, so hopefully I’ll be one of the first to know when the tickets are available this year. Then all we need to do is wait for November 2011 to roll around!

As I write this post I’m listening to a wrap-up of the Arnold Palmer International on internet radio from PGATOUR.COM.

I’m not sure how long this radio program has been around (not long from what I can tell), but I think I’ll be tuning in regularly. I live in Australia, so I’ll be sleeping through most of the program, but I should be able to pick-up some of it on either end of the day.

The PGA Tour radio program is delivered by XM Satellite Radio. XM has approx. 200 internet radio programs, including music and other sports, although I think you need to pay a monthly subscription for access to everything.

Do I really ‘need’ golf radio on top of all the other golf media (eg websites, magazines, podcasts, television)? No, but since when did ‘need’ really dictate our decisions, particularly when it comes to golf!

Here is the current weekly program:

Sunday

I wrote a post about golf podcasts a few weeks ago, and lamented the lack of quality content for golf fans. Well, I’m happy to report that there exists a golf podcast actually worth listening to…..in my humble opinion anyway. It’s called the Devil Ball Golfcast, and is hosted by Jay Busbee. Jay is also the author of Devil Ball Golf, a Yahoo! Sports blog, and one of the better ones around.

The podcasts are produced every 1-2 weeks, and also include the voice of Shane Bacon, who is the editor of Dogs That Chase Cars and guest author for Jay’s blog……..it seems Jay and Shane get along pretty well! They’re both passionate about the game, know their stuff and speak their mind.

Jay obviously has some decent credentials as a sports writer and commentator, as he’s interviewed some fairly big names on his podcast. Recent interviewees include:

• Dave Stockton: modern day putting guru
• Natalie Gulbis: everyone’s favorite female golfer
• Jim Colbert: 8 times PGA Tour winner, and currently on the Champion’s Tour
• Ken Venturi: 1964 US Open winner
• Ian O’Connor: author of ‘Arnie & Jack’
• Dave Kindred: veteran US sports writer

So, if you haven’t tuned in yet, I suggest you check it out.

I‘ve had my iPhone for a few months now, enough time to try out way too many golf apps……and I’ve had some mixed experiences (I wrote about my thoughts on the iSwing app a few weeks ago).

There are literally hundreds (possibly thousands) of golf apps for the iPhone, and many of them are fresh off the developer’s desk and potentially not as stable as they should be. It can therefore be a bit hit and miss in finding quality apps that do what they claim.

So……here are 5 quality golf apps that actually deliver:

1. Golfshot GPS

There are plenty of GPS enabled golf apps on the market these days, but this one leads the pack. The stats tracking and rich charting really set it apart from the others

2. iGolf Rules

A bit pricey, but very practical. It can take time to to find the correct ruling in our little rules book, so we often don’t bother. This app makes it much easier and quicker to make the right, and it’s much more fun to use too

3. Let’s Golf

I’m not really into online games, but I actually enjoyed this one….for awhile. If you’re into games, then try this one – it’s one of the leading iPhone games

4. PGA Tour

This one is great. Get live scoring from the PGA, Nationwide and Champions Tour, as well as player bios, videos (highlights, etc) and tournament schedule. I used it on the way to work the other day to check live scores as the AT&T Pro-Am reached its climax

5. My Golf Swing

I’ve only just started using this one, so can’t attest to whether it will improve your game, but love the idea. This application is aimed at developing a consistent swing tempo. You can even model your tempo on the pros, including Tiger, Vijay, and Sergio

**You can also check out my recent article about the new Mobitee GPS assistant

With the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am being played this week I thought I’d take a look at the spectacular Golf Links course layout on the internet.

After some digging around, I found a great flyover of the Links course at Golf Frontier, a very cool website that provides free virtual flyovers for many courses and detailed course information for 20,000+ courses around the world.

While virtual flyovers aren’t available for all courses, they’re provided for all of the top US courses. Here’s what the Pebble Beach flyover looks like:

In addition to the course flyover, there is an interactive course layout feature which allows you to flyover each hole at your own pace (the virtual flyover is a bit fast), with multiple fairway yardages for each hole. Here’s a snapshot of the 4th hole at Pebble Beach.

While both the virtual flyover and interactive course layout use Google Maps imagery, you don’t need to have Google Maps installed, unlike some other golf course flyover tools. It’s also free, which isn’t the case with some of the other sites. It’s definitely worth a look.

Incidentally, I think I saw this guy on the 7th tee!

I reckon Golf Digest is the best golf magazine on the market, and apparently plenty of golfers feel the same – it just pips Golf Monthly in terms of circulation. I personally prefer the instruction section in Golf Digest…….but that doesn’t stop me getting both mags each month (something my wife can’t quite understand!).

Tips + Smart Phone

Anyway, late last year Golf Digest introduced a ’smart’ phone version of their Tips Plus feature. Tips Plus is a section on Golf Digest’s website that provides a video version of most of the instruction articles that appear in the magazine.

As of November last year, in addition to being able to go online to view the videos, you can now view them using your ’smart’ phone by scanning a barcode from the magazine. It uses a recently developed application called ‘Microsoft Tag’, and it’s pretty cool.

The 1980’s style Microsoft video below shows how the technology works.

The Golf Digest site provides a guide to setting up the Microsoft Tag, which in summary is as follows:

1. Download the Microsoft Tag application to your phone or PDA
2. Open the application and point your phone or PDA at the barcode in the Golf Digest magazine
3. The instruction video will automatically start

Novelty or Mainstay?

It will be interesting to see if this application takes off, or whether it will be a short-lived novelty. I can see myself using it, particularly if I’m reading the magazine on the bus or elsewhere away from my PC. There’s no question that people are experiencing and expecting more of this type of technology, and Golf Digest should be applauded for being at the cutting edge…….a quality not always associated with the golf industry!