The MiScore App is changing the way golfers enter scores for competition and social rounds

Marking and submitting a playing companion’s scorecard has been one of golf’s great traditions. But who could have imagined the day when a paper scorecard would cease to exist on a golf course?

Given current trends, it won’t be long before fully digital scoring replaces the pencil and paper that reigned for a century. And the popular new method is MiScore, an app developed by software innovator MiClub for use on a smartphone during a round of golf. Having pioneered ‘scorecard scanning’ with two iterations of ‘Autoscore’, it was a logical evolution for MiClub to progress to a digital scoring application.

MiScore has completely changed the way golfers are collating and submitting scores in both competition and social rounds. The app has reached almost 300,000 users in less than four years.

Gaining traction

MiScore has been a revelation since it was launched during COVID when sharing paper scorecards between golfers was deemed inappropriate. The app’s growth accelerated dramatically after the R&A, the governing body for Australian and New Zealand golfers, permitted golfers to self-score and use digital-score entry for competition rounds.

Club members have been among the early adopters of MiScore. They’ve seen the benefit of a platform that eliminates scoring errors in handicap competitions such as Stableford, par, stroke, four-ball, foursomes and ambrose. MiScore creates validity in the score-entry process – which a physical scorecard can’t provide – making sure both player and marker scores match hole-by-hole and in total.

For those new to competition golf, the app takes care of handicap calculation and stroke allocation for different scoring formats, says MiClub national account manager Chris Little.

“Scoring for different competition types can be very intimidating for people getting into golf, especially with high handicaps – if you’re playing off 45 and working out where you get your shots,” Little says. “On MiScore a player is simply required to enter the stroke score for each hole, and it does the rest for you. [It’s] really simple and takes a lot of apprehension out of it.”

The new wave of social golfers in the 18 to 35-year-old age bracket is a target audience. Little says the focus has moved beyond traditional competition play and onto engaging the casual player. MiScore is continually updated with new features, too.

“For example, a couple of the recent additions that we’ve included enable you to run private competitions. So as a social player, the group organiser can create a private competition. They invite their mates and all scores feed back to their own private leaderboard for the group.

“We’ve seen some great uses for this where a group of mates go away to play different courses for a long weekend… They play round one, round two, cumulative scores… and it’s all facilitated within the app.”

Once you’ve registered to play a round (competition or social), you select a playing partner to validate your score on the app. MiScore shows the length and par for each hole and the stroke index (where you receive handicap shots).

However MiScore has many additional features, allowing you to ‘Record Putts’, track a ‘Sidematch’ and see a live ‘Leaderboard’ in real time. The GPS Distance Measurement function has been designed with ‘remote mapping’ of more than 1,000 golf courses across Australia and New Zealand.

“The GPS map is interactive. So, if you’re standing on the fairway and want to know the distance to carry a greenside bunker, you can click on the map and it will tell the exact distance that’s needed,” Little says.

MiScore also has a ‘Lost Ball Timer’ to assist in alerting a player when the permitted three minutes has expired to find a ball. The app has a menu to access ‘Local Rules’ for a specific course. ‘Hiding Running Score’ is a feature for players not wishing to be distracted during a round. And the MiScore screensaver can be opened without have to unlock your phone, saving battery power during play. There’s even a ‘Chat’ feature that allows for some good-natured ribbing of friends elsewhere on the golf course. 

MiScore can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play for use on an iPhone or Android device ($19.49 per annum). For more information about the MiScore app and its features, visit MiScore.com.au