Bunker

Bunker is a golf shot tracker for iPhone. You tap in each shot as you play, and it gives you back the round: what you hit, where it finished, how far it went, and a scorecard worth looking at afterwards.

Something wrong, or something missing? Email michaelack27@gmail.com. It is one person answering, so expect a reply within a couple of days rather than within the hour. Telling me which course, which hole and what you expected to happen is almost always enough to find it.

Courses Bunker knows

Bunker only works at the courses it has mapped. There are nine:

Denver, Colorado

Westminster, Colorado

Washington, DC

College Park, Maryland

Richmond, Virginia

Your course is not on the list. Then Bunker cannot follow a round there yet. Every hole has to be drawn and every scorecard typed in by hand before a course works, so they arrive one at a time. Email me the course and I will tell you honestly whether it is likely to be next.

Reporting a comment, and blocking somebody

Friends can leave a comment on a round you have posted, and a friend of somebody whose round you can see may be able to comment there too. If anyone says something they should not:

  1. Press and hold the comment. You can also tap the person’s name, which opens the same thing.
  2. Choose Report this comment, or Block, or both.

Blocking takes effect immediately and needs nobody’s permission. You stop seeing their rounds and anything they have ever said, they stop seeing yours, and neither of you can find the other or send a friend request. Anything they had already written disappears from your view, including on a mutual friend’s card. They are not told that you blocked them.

Reports come to me and are read by a person. Blocking is the faster of the two and the one that solves the problem now; reporting is how something gets dealt with at the account itself. Use both if you want to.

To undo a block, open the Course tab and look under Blocked. Unblocking does not make you friends again. One of you has to ask.

You can also delete any comment left on your own round, whoever wrote it, using the × on the comment.

Questions that come up

How does it know where my ball went? You tell it. You tap the spot on the map where the ball finished. Bunker does not use GPS and never asks for your location.

Why is the map not a satellite photo? Because satellite imagery of a golf course is usually blurry, often years out of date, and at the zoom you actually play at you cannot tell fairway from rough. Every surface in Bunker is drawn from real course geometry instead. It stays sharp at any zoom and it works with no signal, which matters on the back nine.

Where is the pin? Wherever you tap it. The cup is cut somewhere new every morning, so Bunker will not pretend to know. Tap the green to place the pin at the start of a hole and every distance follows from it. Until you do, distances are measured to the middle of the green.

Do I have to sign in? No. Everything works on the phone with no account at all. Signing in backs your rounds up, so a new phone starts where the old one left off, and it is the only way to see friends’ rounds.

My rounds are not backing up. Backup runs when you sign in, when you finish a round, and when you post one. It needs a signal, so a round finished out on the course is sent the next time the app has one. The Course tab says what it is waiting for.

I cannot find my friend. Search takes their exact handle or the exact email address they signed up with. Partial names deliberately do not work, because otherwise anybody could page through a list of every player. Ask them for their handle, which is on their own Course tab.

I played without my phone. Open the Course tab and choose to type a card in. It goes in the same place as every other round.

How do I delete my account? Course tab, then Delete account, next to Sign out. It removes your profile, every round, your friendships, and everything you have said or clapped for, from the backup and from the phone. It cannot be undone.

Privacy

Bunker has no advertising, no analytics and no third-party trackers. The full policy is here: Privacy Policy.