So you’re ready to improve your golf game. What do you need to work on? V1 Game is equipped to give you all the analysis you need to play your best, but first you have to learn how to track shots.

V1 Game provides multiple options for shot tracking that will depend on your personal preference and how you choose to integrate shot tracking with your golf routines.

There are four primary ways users track shots with V1 Game:

This article will give you a brief introduction to each to help you decide the best path for your golf game, linking to separate articles covering each method in detail. Selecting the best option for you will depend on the following:

Option 1: Auto Shot Detection

Auto shot detection is by far the least intrusive of the 4 methods. You simply start the round before you tee off and load the course, put the phone in your pocket and play. V1 Game’s sophisticated algorithms will monitor phone sensor information and make educated predictions on where you hit shots as you play. The shot predictions will appear as white circles with a ‘+’.

You can pull the phone out at any time to use the GPS and rangefinder capabilities, but there is no need to track shots while you play.

When you are done playing. You can review your round immediately or you can save & exit to return at your leisure. When reviewing the round, you simply tap on any white markers that appear in locations in which you hit a shot. Starting with the tee box of each hole. The app will ask you if you hit a shot from that location. Select ‘Yes’, then select a club. If you need to adjust the location of the shot, once you have selected a club, you can long press the shot marker and drag it to the correct location. Simple as that. In order to do more advanced edits, such as changing the club, lie, or inserting a shot you may have missed, click on any shot marker and then click the ‘Edit’ bubble that pops up.

If there are white markers in locations that you did not hit shots, simply ignore them or tap on it and select ‘No’ when asked if you hit a shot from that location.

Occasionally, you will hit shots that cannot be detected by auto shot detection, such as into a lake or out of bounds. You can add these shots manually by using the buttons in the bottom right.

The ‘P’ button allows you to quickly add a penalty. Simply tap the ‘P’, tap the screen where the penalty occurred and hit done. You can use the ‘+’ button to mark any new shot that auto shot missed. Simply tap on the ‘+’ button. Tap on the screen where you hit the shot, then hit done and select a club.

Auto Shot is as easy as it gets. For best results, your phone should be kept in your pocket while you play. However, the phone can also be placed in a golf bag or cart, but shots around the green will not be captured properly.

You can also use our watch app while doing auto shot detection for quick glance yardages. See the option 2 for more details on the watch.

Option 2: Apple Watch

Many of our users like to use the Apple Watch for quick yardages and for tracking shots. If you own an Apple Watch, the V1 Game app should automatically download to it once you download V1 Game from the app store.

To kick off a round on the Apple Watch, simply use your phone load the golf course you are playing. The Apple Watch app should automatically start up once a course is loaded.

The Apple Watch will give you distances to the front (red), middle (white), and back (blue) of the green at a quick glance. You can use the ‘+’ button to manually add a shot from wherever you are standing. Simply hit the ‘+’ and then use the scroll to select a club.

You will notice after tracking a shot, that the ‘+’ is replaced by your current score on the hole that is showing. The button is still there for tracking your next shot.

Once you have a tracked a shot on a hole, the putting option will appear at the bottom of the watch screen. Tapping the putter icon will give you access to quickly enter putts. Two scroll wills will appear as in the screenshot on the right. The leftmost wheel is to select the number of putts it took you to hole out. The rightmost wheel is to mark your starting distance from the hole in feet. For example, if you 3 putted from 45ft, you would choose 3 on the left wheel and 45ft on the right wheel.

Tapping on the ‘Flag’ icon in the upper right of the watch face will move the pin location to wherever you are standing. This is useful if you want accurate results for where the flag is each time you play.

There are several technology limitations with the watch that you should be aware of. The most important is that the watch will display GPS distances from your phone whenever it is paired and in range. This means that if you leave your phone in the cart and the watch can reach it, the distance information displayed will be from your phone to the green and not from your watch. This is a limitation from Apple on the hardware. If you want to force GPS distances to be from the watch, you can put the watch in Airplane mode. However, while in Airplane mode, no shot data will be transferred to the phone and the phone and watch will not synchronize. When you are ready to synchronize, simply take the watch out of Airplane mode. It could take up to several minutes for all the data to transfer. It is very important to keep an eye on your watch battery life when using this option as if the battery dies, you will lose any shots tracked on the watch while in Airplane mode.

Option 3: Using the Phone After the Round

Many of our competitive players prefer to track shots after they are done playing. This means they don’t have to worry about any shot tracking while on the golf course. Additionally, some tournaments prevent you from having a phone on during play.

Our auto shot methodology still applies here. You can use Option 1 to track shots while playing and you can do all your post round edits from home.

If you did not use Option 1 while playing, you will have to have a decent memory of your round. Luckily, our beautiful aerial maps will show the course overview. So rather than remembering clubs and distances, you can just tap on the locations that you remember hitting shots.

To use this mode, simply hit ‘Play’ from the main menu, select or search for the course you played to load the GPS data. You will hit the ‘+’ button in the lower right to add a shot. Since you are not on the golf course, the shot marker will be added to the middle of the hole you are currently looking at. You can move the shot to the correct location by tapping on the screen or long pressing the marker and dragging it to the location where the shot took place. Keep in mind that you should always be marking the locations where shots started, not where they ended. For example, your first shot should be marked on the tee box you played from, NOT in the fairway where it ended up. Your second shot will be marked in the fairway as that is where it started.

For each shot, you will simply tap the ‘+’ move the marker to the location of the shot. Hit ‘Done’ and then select the club you used to hit the shot. If you do not wish to track clubs used, you can disable this in the app settings.

It’s as simple as that. In 5-10 minutes you can add all the shots from an 18 hole round once you become accustomed to the flow.

Option 4: Using the Phone During the Round

You can always track rounds while playing. We prefer not to use this option as it can impact pace of play, distract you from golf, or frustrate you if you run into issues. However, if you get the hang of marking shots, it can be done seamlessly and quickly while you play.

Again, auto shot tracking applies here as well. If you are on the golf course you will see the white circles popup to indicate predicted shots. You can tap on the circles at any time to confirm or reject the predicted shots.

Additionally, you can manually add a shot by clicking the ‘+’ button in the lower right. A shot marker will appear at your current location if you are on the golf course. You can adjust this location by tapping the screen or long press and dragging the marker to the desired location. Click ‘Done’ when satisfied and select the club you used.

Summary

There are multiple ways to track your shots aimed at convenience for your personal workflow. Tracking shots is the first step to learning about your golf game and unlocking your golf potential.

For additional information, please also see our YouTube tutorials for live examples of each of the options discussed here.