If you’ve ever stood on the driving range wondering what to practice, or spent hours hitting balls with little improvement to show for it, you’re not alone. Most golfers practice without purpose, and most golf apps offer generic drills that don’t address your specific weaknesses. That’s where Break X Golf comes in – offering personalised practice based on how you play golf.
What is Break X Golf?
Break X Golf is the brainchild of Will Shaw (PGA professional with a PhD and 20 years of coaching experience) and Adam Brooks (20 years in web/mobile development). It’s a data-driven practice platform that builds truly personalised practice plans based on your actual playing statistics.
The concept is simple: feed the app your stats, and it creates a practice plan specifically designed to help you shoot lower scores. No more generic “hit 50 balls with each club” nonsense. This is practice like a pro, with every minute purposefully targeted at your biggest scoring opportunities.
How It Works
Getting started is pretty simple to start (once you have some playing stats). It takes 5 minutes to enter setup your account and enter some stats and how much time you have to practice each week.
The minimum input needed is fairways hit, greens in regulation, up and downs, and number of putts. If you use a Strokes Gained app, you can build an even more comprehensive plan with SG data for driving, approach, short game, and putting. There is a new simpler mode coming for beginners (left hand screen) but this isn’t live in the app at the time of writing.
You can add further breakdowns of strokes gained approach and putting by distance and select what side of the fairway or green you miss to get an even more persoanlised plan, but it does a good job just with high level data.
The Personalised Practice Plans
Once you enter your data, Break X Golf instantly generates a personalised practice plan based on the time you have to practice. It:
- Ranks the areas of your game (strongest to weakest)
- Breaks done how much time to work on each area
- Gives you a list of skills games and technique work for each area.
What Is Good / What Is Missing
It does a great job of picking skills games to target your weaknesses and the skills games are great! The text instructions are generally good, but some of the bigger games take some working out. Pictures or videos would be great and make the games easier to understand.
It’s cool that it tracks your scores for each game and gives you benchmarks for each game based on your handicap.
As you log more rounds, the app automatically alerts you when it’s built a more personalised or up-to-date plan. Which is great, as you just have to focus on entering new rounds after each round.
Other Features
The Break X Golf app does have a page where it shows you your playing stats over time (Performance), but if you already have a GPS app, it’s not likely to tell you anything you don’t know.
It also has a hub page when you tab the logo, that allows you to track what you are practising each week and your progress. This is nice, and keeps you motivated, but feels like it could use some improvement.
The Skills Games: Where Break X Golf Really Shines
This is where Break X Golf separates itself from everything else on the market. The app features 140+ skills games that aren’t just drills – they’re genuinely engaging challenges that make practice fun and purposeful.
A few favourites of mine are:
10-20 ft putting
Most golfers have an average first putt length of 14-16 feet. Scratch golfers as a mix of birdies and par putts, higher handicappers have a miss of par and bogey putts.
This game targets that range and gives you three attempts from each foot to see how low you can go.
Super fun, feels focused and you do start to get those little doubts pop in your mind over line as you get close to a PB.
Pressure Chipping
I’m now in level 2 of this game. The first level was a bit easy, but now it’s a very good challenge!
You have to complete four core shots around the green in a row. To complete a stage one of the two balls has to finish inside 3-feet.
I hate it and love it. I hit bad shots when I get close to completing it, but it simulates exactly how I feel on the golf course.
9 Hole Birdie Challenge
I added this one manually as I got ‘Par Challenge’ to begin with (you can edit plans and pick any of your unlocked skills games to add to your plan).
This is an on-course game where you don’t worry about what you shoot instead, you just try to make a birdie on every hole. If not, pick up and move on.
Super simple, but it’s great fun for a quick evening challenge,e and I love how it gets me focused on hitting great golf shots and committing. Rather than being too tentative.
There is an easier version called ‘9 Hole Par Challenge’.
As you perform well in practice, you unlock new, more challenging levels. This keeps your practice optimally challenging and prevents the boredom that kills most practice routines. Each game tracks your score and shows your personal best and average versus benchmarks for your handicap level (sorry, I couldn’t fit all of that on one screen in the shots above).
Course Transfer: Practice That Actually Helps Your Scores
One of the biggest criticisms of practice apps is that they don’t help you play better golf – they just make you better at hitting balls on the range. Break X Golf solves this with on-course games that work on strategy and make you think differently about how to play.
The skills games take a little getting used to, and some need 5 mins to set up, but they develop the kind of focused, target-oriented mindset that really helps you improve.
When you’ve spent hours hitting precise targets under pressure in practice, those approach shots on the course become much more manageable.
Who Should Use Break X Golf?
Break X Golf works for a surprisingly wide range of golfers. The team has success stories for players as high as 54 handicap, though it might be overwhelming for complete beginners. I feel the sweet spot is 0-24 handicap players who practice regularly (2+ hours a week) and want to make that time count.
Some of the games can be quite challenging (perfect for keeping low-handicap players engaged), while others might feel too easy initially. However, the progressive unlocking system means you’ll quickly advance to appropriately challenging levels.
Current Limitations
Break X Golf isn’t perfect, the team are working hard to ship updates every month, but it’s important to be upfront about the current limitations:
Manual Data Entry: You’ll need to input your stats after each round. This isn’t a huge burden, but it does require discipline and either basic stat-tracking or a Strokes Gained app.
Visual Content: The skills games currently lack images or videos, which would make them easier to understand and more engaging. The team is working on this.
Development Stage: Some cool features like leaderboards and social aspects are still in development.
Progress Tracking: While the app tracks your progress, this aspect could use some improvement to better visualise your improvement over time.
How It Compares to the Competition
Core Golf: Offers drills, but they’re not really personalised and lack the engagement factor that makes Break X Golf special.
Draw More Circles: Has a cool-looking playing stats aspect, but the drills feel generic and aren’t focused on your specific needs.
The personalisation factor, and great skills games designed by an expert coach are what sets Break X Golf apart. While other apps might have flashier interfaces or more social features, none of them actually analyse your game and tell you what and how to practice.
Technical Setup and Usability
Break X Golf is currently a web-based app optimised for mobile. This means it works on all devices – phone, tablet, laptop – and you can seamlessly switch between them. Getting the app icon set up takes about 2 minutes, and then it works very much like a native app.
The interface is clean and purposeful, focusing on functionality over flashy design. There are a couple of screens that still feel clunky, but its worth it for having unlimited personalised practice plans and tracking, if you practice and want to shoot lower scores.
Pricing and Value
Break X Golf offers a 7-day free trial, then it’s $19/month or $179/year. Given the level of personalisation and the quality of the skills games, this represents good value for anyone serious about improvement.
But the next section is likely where we’ll see this change to great value.
What’s Coming Next
The Break X Golf team are working on some exciting features:
GPS App Integration: They already have a GPS app in beta (ask nicely and you might get free access – it’s looking really good), which means you’ll soon get two golf apps for the price of one, plus seamless data transfer.
Visual Content: Game visuals are in development to make the skills games even more engaging and easier to understand. This doesn’t change the function, but I feel it will really make the app feel nicer to use.
Support and Community
While there’s no formal community features yet, the team is small and responsive. Reach out to them and you’ll likely get a reply from one of the founders – try that with any other golf app!
Golf Insider Verdict
Break X Golf fills a genuine gap in the market. It’s the only app that offers truly personalised practice plans, and the skills games are genuinely engaging and effective. Yes, it requires some manual data entry and lacks some polish, but the core concept is so sound that these limitations feel minor.
This is a great tool for golfers who practice 2+ hours a week and want to get better. If you practice 1 hour or less, you may want to. look elsewhere.
There is a 7-day free trial for Break X Golf, which means you can give it a go and see how you get on. I feel it takes 2-3 weeks to get into the swing of things, and then you can start to see your progress within key skills games and out on the golf course.