Putty is an AI caddie I designed and built for iOS and Android. It gives golfers club recommendations, GPS distances on 30,000+ courses, and AR green reading — all from a phone, with no extra hardware. The idea came from my own rounds: putting decides so many scores, and the tools that actually help were either expensive gadgets or generic advice that didn't know my game.
The audience is golfers of every level — weekend players who want a simple number, and better players who want strategy. Casual golfers need confidence without a laser or a caddie. Better players need advice that accounts for wind, hazards, and how they actually hit each club. The product had to feel instant on the course, not like a dashboard you study in the parking lot.
Three problems sat at the center of the product. Club selection is guesswork for most amateurs — so the AI caddie recommends a club from lie, wind, distance, and personal distances. GPS rangefinders and yardage books are extra gear — so the phone shows front, middle, and back, plus hazards, on 30,000+ courses. Reading greens takes years — so the phone measures the surface directly and draws the line.
Rather than guess slope from the camera, I built the read around AimPoint — the method good golfers already use. The player lays the phone flat on the green at three spots: beside the ball, at the midpoint, and next to the hole. Each spot takes a timed gravity reading from the phone's motion sensors, so the surface tells the app how it tilts instead of the app inferring it from a picture.
A reading only counts while the phone is genuinely still and level. Progress fills over about a second and a half and backs off the moment it's disturbed — and the phone has to be picked up before the next spot can begin, so one placement can't quietly count twice.
The player then marks the ball and the hole in AR. Putty combines the three readings — weighted toward the hole, where the ball is slowest and breaks hardest — scales the result by green speed, and draws the putt's real curve on the green, along with the aim point to start it on.
Putty is live on the App Store and Google Play, running on iPhone, Apple Watch, and Android. What began as an AR putting experiment is now a full round companion — AI caddie, GPS across 30,000+ courses, shot tracking, and green reading — supported by a subscription business, a marketing site at putty.golf, and a help center for players. I design, build, and ship every release myself.
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I built Putty as founder, designer, and developer — product design (flows, information architecture, visual design), engineering (Unity, iOS, Android, and Apple Watch), and brand and marketing (putty.golf, the App Store listing, and the help center).