Intelligolf
from Karrier Communications

Thought I've been a golfer for many years, I've always been considered a "hacker", playing once or twice a year at best. Recently, however, I began to get serious about my playing. In my pursuit of ways to improve my game, I decided to check out Intelligolf. If I was going to get serious, I knew that I needed to keep track of what I was doing, and Intelligolf does that very well.
This review will show the overall operation of the app, with my hacker-golfer opinions thrown in here and there. Please don't laugh at my golf scores! I'm working on that!

Karrier Communications first released Intelligolf in 1997. The application is quite versatile - it's compatible with all PalmOne handhelds, Pocket PCs, Smartphones, Sony Ericsson P800/900s (Symbian OS), Microsoft Windows Mobile-based Smartphones (just announced), and all Windows-based PCs, so no matter what your flavor, Intelligolf is likely to work for your setup! My setup is a Samsung i700 Pocket PC Phone Edition, and I also have the Desktop version installed on my Windows XP Pro machine.

Installation

Installation on both the mobile device as well as the Desktop went very smoothly. I opted to install the application onto my Storage Card on the Pocket PC, to save memory. This does not affect operation at all, as far as I can tell.

I use Spb's Pocket Plus, so I have a cool Intelligolf icon right on my Today Screen:

Getting started

First thing you need to do is install or enter in some Course information. There are over 19,000 courses that you can download from the Intelligolf website. You can do that via your Desktop (if you have the Desktop version), or from your mobile device (if you have connectivity to the internet). Since I have a Phone Edition Pocket PC, I am able to take advantage of downloading courses right from my device.

In my example, I'll illustrate downloading a new course, and simulate a game with my nephew. Below, you can see some previous rounds that I played at various courses.

Since I want to add a new course, I'll choose Download Course from the Round menu, so I can set up the course where we're going to play. I'll use Valhalla as an example.

This opens up Pocket Internet Explorer. The following animation shows how the info is entered, and a course is saved to memory. I like to choose "Change" when downloading a course so I can edit the name of the course as well as change the location to a golf folder on my storage card, so I can keep track.
One other thing worth noting: I was initially having a heck of a time finding some courses that I knew should be listed, but kept coming up with Course not found. I then discovered that my problem was using the state abbreviation instead of the entire state name! Keep that in mind when searching for a course. Some use the abbreviation, and some use the full name.

Here are the details for the Valhalla Course. Pretty slick! Everything is in there! Yards for each Tee, the Par, hole handicap, and Course Notes for each hole, which show up after you have entered details about holes. That could prove mighty handy for remembering how to play certain holes, especially at courses you don't frequent that often!

Now that the course is downloaded, Dylan and I can get ready for our game! With the course info for Valhalla entered, I can now tap on New Round and choose Valhalla, as well as which Tees we'll play from, and whether or not we are starting from the front 9 or back 9.

Let's tee off!

Continued on Page 2 >>