MAMARONECK, N.Y. — Standing on the 14th tee at Winged Foot (West) Golf Club, USGA CEO Mike Whan pulled his iPhone out of his back pocket and thumbed his score from the previous hole into the GHIN app, a bogey on the 194-yard par-3.
“I’m going to have to break this habit,” he says, nodding toward his phone. “I’m headed to Pebble next week.”
You can use your phone on the course at Pebble Beach Golf Links, but not at the other area courses Whan was visiting (I’ll leave where to your imagination). Nevertheless, his usage of the beta version of the new GHIN app was prolific on this day at Winged Foot and, as it turned out, quite useful for all of us.
“It’s a full 255 to carry that bunker,” Whan says on the par-4, 4th, using his finger to move the GPS landing zone on the GHIN course map and then pointing to a classic Tillinghast fairway bunker on the left.
“You can carry that,” Golf Digest senior writer Alex Myers says confidently.
“Maybe you can,” Whan laughs.
We were at Winged Foot Golf Club, host of six U.S. Opens and a seventh coming in 2028, to stress test the new beta version of the GHIN app, which is expected to be released to the public in late summer or early fall. As it turns out, the only stress felt that day was on the first tee hitting driver in front of the USGA CEO (a 3 handicap). The updated app was much less shaky.
The main feature that stood out was the revamped GPS course mapping system, mentioned earlier, and a heat map that shows the slope of greens for both approach shot positioning and reading the break on putts. Our caddies were exceptional and knew the course like the back of their hand. But it was cool having a full course breakdown in the palm of my own.
The stats and insights page is more robust, as I learned after inputting my score, and subtler changes to color and design modernize the experience. I liked the fact that when I started my round, the first course that came up was Winged Foot.
Yet at its heart, the app remains a regular golfer’s mashie niblick or, in layman’s terms, a utility club.
“The core function of the app is getting a handicap index, setting up matches to play with other people, and keeping score in the app,” says Tom Padula, managing director of GHIN. “That’s how most people use it. That’s going to be even faster and better than ever.
“A very small percentage use the GPS functions in-round, but as GPS is becoming more common on the course, we expect more people to use it. Most people don’t even know they have a GPS version in their app. But as more and more people are using that in GHIN, they’ll see new imagery of the holes and the surrounding holes, even surrounding fairways and houses. We joke that it’s so good now you can see a house around a left dogleg in case you have a nasty hook.”
In 2025, 2.91 million people posted a score in GHIN. Over 80 million total rounds were inputted. But of those 80 million, only 39% inputted their hole-by-hole scores. Of that 39%, only 6% inputted stats.
In the new version of the app, stats are displayed more dynamically. There are graphs, charts and tables, which can be used to examine areas to improve your game. This, along with the course map functionality are the most underutilized features on the app.
“The USGA is thinking about product design differently than it did a few years ago,” Padula said. “We really wanted to modernize the design and experience to make it even easier and more fun to use.”
Over 29 million people played at least one round of on-course golf in 2025, according to the National Golf Foundation. Based on the numbers above, that means the GHIN system has only captured 10% of that audience so far. But as the USGA does with its championship course setup and rules of the game, it’s planning now for a future where it has 10 million users and over 200 million rounds are being inputted annually.
“It’s easy for all of us to take what’s in our palm for granted,” Whan says. “But if you think about just 10 years ago, about 30 million rounds were being posted in the U.S. So 10 years ago, somebody had to say, ‘Is it feasible that we could take 30 million rounds and triple that in the next decade?’ Because nobody at the time, outside of the USGA, had to think about that. But Tom’s the guy right now thinking, what if that 83 million becomes 245 million.”
It’s a lofty goal, but realistic with the way the game is growing. If more people utilized the app to its full potential, usage could increase even faster. Just as long as you’re allowed to use your phone on that course.
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