One of our goals when creating TeeShot has always been to make it as simple as possible to use. No one wants to need to keep looking up how to use features while you're out on the course. With all of the options available to users in the current version of TeeShot, though, this page will give you the details you need to be able to quickly take advantage of the real power of TeeShot.

• Getting Started
• Courses
• Downloading Courses
• Players
• Rounds
• Starting Rounds
• Keeping Score
• Emailing Scorecards
• Uploading Rounds
• Statistics
• Settings
• Protecting your Data

The first step towards getting the most out of your golf game is getting TeeShot onto your iPhone or iPod touch. When you buy TeeShot from the iTunes Application Store, it will automatically be downloaded and installed on your phone. Once it is there, just tap the TeeShot icon to launch TeeShot and you will see the home page which has shortcuts to all of the main features of TeeShot. Along the bottom of every TeeShot page is the toolbar which provides one tap access to key parts of the application.

• Home - Returns you to the home page of TeeShot no matter where you are in the application
• Courses - Takes you to the full course list where you can add, remove or look at any detail of the courses that have been installed in TeeShot
• Statistics - Shows you your statistics for all of your rounds in TeeShot. This is a quick way of seeing all of the stats about your play, including average shot and max distances for each club, your best and worst rounds, and much more.
• Rounds - Takes you to the full round list where you can start, remove or review any of the rounds you have entered into TeeShot
• Current Round - If you are currently playing a round of golf, the current round button will take you back to that round no matter where you are in the application

The other features on the home page are described in the sections below.

TeeShot maintains a list of all of the courses you have played at. The course information includes the address of the course as well as information about each tee set and hole on the course. You can create these course definitions in TeeShot, or download them from TeeShotLive's extensive database of courses around the world. While it is possible to start a round without entering the course information, several features of TeeShot require a course to be defined before starting play.

The course list shows you all of the courses you have created or downloaded. You can delete courses by tapping the Edit button the top right corner of the list, then selecting the - button next to the course you want to delete, then tapping Delete. Downloading courses and creating courses have their own section in the documentation.

Tapping a course will show you the Course Details page which shows the contact information for the course as well as the tee sets that have been defined for it. You can tap the Edit button in the top right corner to edit any of the contact information or to add or delete a tee set. When you are not in editing mode, tapping the phone number will attempt to dial that number with your iPhone. Tapping the address will look it up in the Maps application and tapping the website will open that site in Safari.

Tapping any of the tee sets will show you the details for that set of tees. Just like with courses, you can tap the edit button to edit the tee's name, slope or rating. The length and par values are automatically calculated as the information for each hole is entered. Below the tee information is the list of all of the holes in that tee set. You can see their par, handicap and length values at a glance or tap a hole to edit that information or set the GPS location for the hole.

On the course page, below the list of tees, you will see a graph of your scores at that course. You need to have played a course at least twice for this graph to show up.

Since TeeShot was released, users have created and uploaded thousands of courses to TeeShotLive.com. Downloading those courses to your iPhone or iPod touch is a very simple process. On the main screen, tap the "Download a course" option. This will load the TeeShotLive search page in Safari where you can search by a course's name, city, state, or country. TeeShotLive will then return a list of courses that match your criteria. Courses with GPS information entered will show up with a blue icon next to them, while courses without GPS data will have a green icon. You can tap the course to get more information about it, like the address, phone number and website. You can also view the scorecard by tapping Scorecard.

Once you are sure this is the course you would like to download, just tap "Download this course" and the iPhone will then send you back to TeeShot where you can confirm the download. After that, TeeShot will download the course definition from TeeShotLive.com and install it into your list of courses.

One of the most common questions to TeeShot Live is "How do I get my course into TeeShot?" Adding courses is actually very easy. Most people can enter their own favorite course's information in just a few minutes and after on click to upload, the course is immediately available for download on any iPhone or iPod touch.

There are four ways to create courses - take your pick of the simplest path for you: CourseBuilder is a free application for MacOS 10.5 (Leopard) or for Windows that makes it very simple to create a new course definition, enter the par, handicap and length information for each hole and with just one click you can upload the course to TeeShot Live. CourseBuilder also lets you edit any existing courses and is the best way to fix a problem with a course, or update information when a course changes. Click here to see more about CourseBuilder and to download it for free. A MacOS Tiger version is planned for the not too distant future.

The Online Course Creator is a web page that lets you upload all of the course and tee information straight from your web browser. You can enter all of the tee information in a single form and with one click, the course is available for everyone to download and enjoy. Click here to start entering your course right now.

Of course, TeeShot lets you create a course definition right on the iPhone or iPod touch and upload them to TeeShot Live with that same one click simplicity of CourseBuilder and the Online Course Creator. Because a desktop computer is a bit easier for entering a bunch of information, it is probably fastest to use CourseBuilder or the Online Course Creator to create a course, but TeeShot will work just fine and also lets you update a course and upload the changes.

You can create a new course in TeeShot by tapping Create a course on the home page, or going to the courses list and tapping Edit, then tapping the + button next to Create a course. You will be asked for a name for the course. Once you enter that and tap Done, you will be taken to the course page which is already in edit mode. Go ahead and enter the course location, phone number and website (if it has one).

TeeShot supports measuring distances in yards or meters. Tap the units field until the correct value comes up for how this course is defined. It should match whichever units are used on the courses' scorecard and on the course itself. When you are ready to start entering the tees, just tap the + button next to "Add a tee set". You will be asked if you are creating a 9 or 18 hole course and then asked for the name of the tees. Once that is done, you can enter the slope and rating for that tee set, then tap each hole and enter the hole's length, par and handicap values. You can repeat this process for each of the tee sets at that course.

TeeShot can keep track of the scores for up to four players in a round. Before you can add a player to a round, though, you need to first tell TeeShot a little bit about them. Go to the home page and then tap the Players button. This will take you to the players list where you will see your player name -- which may just say (me) if you haven't configured it yet. Tap the (me) item and you can select your user card from the Contacts list. Then enter your handicap index, if you have one, and your email address. This is the email address you will use to email scorecards. You don't need to enter an email address to use TeeShot, but you do need to enter one before you can email a scorecard.

To add a player to the list, tap the Edit button in the top right corner, then choose either "Add a player from contacts" or "Add a player by name". The first option will let you choose a user from your contacts list and it will copy their name and user image to the list. Whenever their picture is changed in the Contacts application, TeeShot will use that image. If you don't have them in your contacts list it's no problem, you can just add them by name.

When you email a scorecard, the default address list will be the email addresses of all of the players in the round, so this would be a great time to enter their email address and save some time later on.

To remove a player from the list, tap Edit in the top right corner, then tap the - button next to their name and then tap Delete. While the player will be deleted, any round information will persist.

TeeShot's primary focus, of course, is to help you keep track of your golf rounds. You can choose the level of detail that you want to enter for your round. You can just enter the strokes on each hole, you can track more detailed information for each hole like putts, penalties, sand saves, fairways, etc., or, if you want, you can track information about every shot including which club you used, how the shot ended up and how far it went. No matter how much information you want to track, TeeShot has an easy way to enter that information.

Golf is a social sport, so you can also track the other players in your group and at the end of the round, you can upload your results to popular golf websites or email scorecards to your friends.

Each round has it's own set of statistics. To see them, just tap a player's name in the round players list, and then tap Round Details, you can see a set of statistics about that round.

You can start a round by tapping the "Start a new round" button on the home page, or going to the rounds list and tapping the Edit button and then tapping the + next to "Start a new round". You will then be asked if you want to choose one of the courses in your list, or start with a blank course. The blank course option is great for when you didn't even know you were going to play and the course is not yet in TeeShotLive but there are a few features that won't work if you go down the blank course route so if possible, enter or download the course information first.

If tapped "Choose a course" you will see the courses list where you can choose the course you want to play. Once you choose the course, you then need to choose the tee set you will be playing from. After selecting the tee set, you will see a button in the top right corner that says Start Round. Tap that and you're off! You will then be on the round players page that shows you the options for group scoring, scorecard, notes, the list of players and an option to send the round.

If you want to add more players, tap the Edit button in the top right corner then tap the + next to Add a player. You will need to choose a player from your players list, then choose the tee set that they will be playing from and click Start Round.

There are three primary ways to keep score in TeeShot. The one you should use depends on how much information you want to track. You can actually jump between the different methods during the round so starting with one method does not stop you from using any of the others. We'll start with the simplest first.

Group scoring is the fastest way to enter scores and is optimized for entering scores at the end of each hole for one or more players.

The Group Scoring page lets you see all of the players on a single page and entering scores is as simple as tapping a field and entering the number. From the round players page, just tap "Group scoring" to bring up the Group scoring page. It will open to the first hole that is missing a score for one of the players. You can use the arrow keys in the top right corner to switch between holes. At the top of the page, you will see some statistics about the current hole, including it's length, par and handicap.

Below the hole information, there will be an entry for each player. Next to the player's name you may see a number of dots. Those dots indicate how many strokes the player gets on this hole based on their handicap. After that, you will see their cumulative score and how many strokes they are above or below par.

On the next row, you will see entries for strokes, putts and penalties. To change a value, just tap the current value and a keyboard will appear for you to enter a new value. When you enter a value, it will automatically advance to the next field. To hide the keyboard, just tap the Done key.

You can also track whether they hit the fairway, got a sand save or an up & down by tapping on those field names. Each time you tap, you will see a different value. For fairway, your options include 'F' (or 'G' if it is a par 3) '<' and '>'. 'F' means you hit the fairway on your tee shot. '<' means you missed the fairway to the left and '>' means you missed it to the right. For sand saves and up & downs, you can tap between 'yes' (meaning that you got the save or the up & down) 'no' meaning you didn't, or blank which means it doesn't apply for this hole. Your sand save and up & down percentages only count the yes and no holes and ignore any hole with a blank value.

Below those options, you will see a summary area where you can see your net score, stableford score and, if appropriate, whether this hole counts as a green in regulation.

Stroke scoring is the simplest way to enter your strokes after each shot. While it is possible to use shot scoring for any number of players, group scoring is more optimal for multiple player scoring.

You can get to stroke scoring by either tapping the player's name in the round players list or by tapping the chevron button next to the player's name in the group scoring page. Like in the group scoring page, there are arrow buttons in the top right corner that let you navigate between holes. After you hit a shot, just tap the + button next to strokes and it will increment your strokes. If that stroke is a putt, just tap the + next to putts and it will increment both putts and strokes. Similarly, tapping the plus button next to penalties will add a penalty and a stroke to the hole. If you accidentally tap a + button too many times, you can tap a - button to reverse the action.

Just like in group scoring, you can track your fairways, sand saves and up & downs by tapping on the appropriate line to change the values.

Finally, you can tap the hole notes line to enter some notes about this hole. You can use this notes field for whatever you want -- comments about how close you were to the stick or perhaps an explanation that the extra strokes were because a coyote took your ball. Don't laugh, it's happened!

For the players who want it all, there is shot by shot scoring. Only the main player can track individual shots and they get to this feature through the stroke scoring page. Right below the hole information, there is a button called "Shot by Shot Details" and when you tap it, you will see a list of different shots. Choose the most appropriate shot name for this particular shot and then you will see the shot scoring page. Here you can choose the club you used, the result of the shot from a detailed list of options, how long the shot was, whether there was a penalty and if this shot was a full swing.

Just like in stroke scoring, adding a penalty here will also add a stroke to your score. If the shot type is one of the three putt shot types (putt 1 through putt 3) it will add a putt and a stroke to your score. If the full swing value is set to "no", then this shot will not be used when calculating your average distances with this club. If you are doing anything less than a full swing, you probably want to set full swing to "no" to avoid reducing your club length averages. The default is no for chip shots and the option is hidden for putts because it does not apply.

Shot by shot scoring also allows you to use the iPhone GPS features to measure the distance of each shot as well as measuring the distance to the green if the course has been tagged with GPS locations. Just set the GPS location at the start of each shot, and TeeShot will set the shot length of the previous shot.

To tag a shot location, stand near your ball and tap the "Set GPS location" button. The iPhone will then start trying to figure out where you are based on the GPS tracking chip in the phone. When it has a reading, it will tell you how accurate that reading is. When it gets down to 17 yards or less, it is probably pretty accurate thoguh this can sometimes take a little while to get an accurate reading (sometimes 15-25 seconds). Once you are satistfied that the reading is accurate, you can tap "Save location" and it will remember that shot location. If you want to see what it got for the location, you can tap the blue chevron button to see that location in Google Maps. If you want a better reading, you can tap the Update GPS location button and if you want to stop the phone from looking for a coordinate just tap "Stop updating GPS location".

Once it has a reading (or while it is getting an updated coordinate), it you will see some distances below these buttons. Depending on which shot it is and whether the course has GPS information, it will tell you your distance from the tee, your distance from the previous shot, and your distance to the green.

Finally, there is a Clear Shot Data button that will get delete this shot's information and remove and strokes, putts or penalties it added when the stroke was created.

While it is certainly more time consuming to enter the club, shot distances and shot results for each shot, gathering this information makes it possible to see average shot distances with each club in the statistics page which can be a very useful set of statistics to have.

At the end of a round, you may want to share the scorecard with the other players or with your friends. You can use the Email Scorecard feature to do this. There are two ways to email a scorecard. First, if you are looking at the scorecard for the round, there is an "Email scorecard" button right below it. Second, there is a "Send round" button on the round players list page and the first option on the Send round page is "Email scorecard".

When you tap Email scorecard, you can enter some email address that you would like to send the scorecard to. The default is the email addresses for each of the players in the round but you can change this list to any email addresses you would like. Once the to list is correct, tap the Send button to send the email. If you just want to see what the scorecard will look like, tap the "View online scorecard" and it will take you to a page in Safari to let you see the online scorecard. That page is also available through a link on the scorecard email.

TeeShot allows you to upload your round information to certain web services that provide additional services for TeeShot users. The list of these services will be growing as more partner websites come online. Here is the list of our current partners:

USHandicap.com provides TeeShot users with a way to get an official USGA handicap index simply by uploading each of their rounds to this convenient internet service. In addition, you can compare your rounds with your friends, browse your full round history, access numerous statistics reports and take advantage of discounts and special offers available to USHandicap.com members. TeeShot Software has arranged for a special discount for TeeShot users who wish to sign up for USHandicap.com's handicapping service. When signing up for your account, us the coupon code TSS-001-XYUH-0809 and you will receive 50% off of your membership rate.

Once you have signed up, go to the Maintenance page, choose Manage External Devices and select TeeShot from the drop down list. Then enter your device id, which is visible in the USHandicap.com page under "Send round". After you have registered your phone with them, uploading a round is just a single tap.

oobgolf.com provides a great online social network for golfers and TeeShot makes it even better by letting you upload your rounds to their service. Just sign up at oobgolf.com and then enter your account username and password in TeeShot and you can upload your round with just a single tap.

Once your rounds have been uploaded to oobgolf, you can check out all sorts of great graphs and stats as well as share your progress with your friends.

More partners are coming soon, so check back for more news. If your favorite online service has an option to let accept uploads from applications like TeeShot, just have them contact us.

TeeShot tracks statistics for each round, and across all round for the main player. To see statistics for a single round, tap a player's name in the round players list, and then tap Round Details. If you want to see statistics for the main player that span all round played, you can tap Statistics from the home page, or just tap the statistics button in the toolbar to bring up the stats page from anywhere in the application.

Statistics are broken down into several groups:

• Playing totals includes how many rounds you've played, your calculated handicap and totals for things like strokes, putts, fairways, etc. You must have at least five complete 18 hole rounds before TeeShot will display a calculated handicap rating for you.
• Club distances shows your average and long shot distances for each club that you have used to while tracking your score in shot by shot mode.
• Stroke averages displays your average number of strokes for par 3, par 4 and par 5 holes
• High/Low scores shows your best and worst round scores for 9 and 18 holes and also your highest and lowest scores relative to par
• Shots to par displays totals for each of the following hole results: Hole in one, double eagle, eagle, birdie, par, bogey, double bogey, triple bogey+

TeeShot has a few settings that you can change based on your preference. To get to the settings page, tap the Settings button on the home page. You will see the following options:

• Display distance using (yards/meters). TeeShot will show you all distances using either metric or imperial units. If the course has the units value defined, TeeShot will translate between course units and your display preferences. If the course does not have a units value defined, it will assume that the units are the same as your display preferences.
• Handicap system (USGA/EGA)
The United States Golf Association and the European Golf Association use slightly different calculations for figuring out your course handicap. Choose the appropriate value based on where you are playing.

The settings page also provides options for backing up and restoring your data, but that is covered in the next section.

After entering a bunch of rounds, you want to make sure your data is safe in case something happens to your phone. TeeShot allows you to back up your golf data to TeeShotLive.com.

To back up your data, go to the Settings page from the home page, then tap "Upload Data to Internet". Your complete database will then be uploaded to TeeShotLive.com. You should back up before each update to either the iPhone OS or to TeeShot itself because there are known issues in the iPhone's application update process that can cause data loss. Backing up your data only takes a couple of seconds so feel free to back up whenever you want to.

To restore your data, just tap the "Restore Data from Internet" button and after confirming that you want to restore your database, TeeShot will attempt to download it from TeeShotLive.com and then replace your current database with the version from the internet. Any data entered since the last backup will be replaced during a data restore.