Home Nine is in beta. Testers play the full game free until December 31, 2026. How to join

How it plays

Here's how Home Nine works, including its limits. We want you to know them before you buy.

Your launch monitor

Home Nine connects to a FlightScope Mevo, Garmin R10, Square Golf Omni or Open Launch Nova directly, with no other app. Any other monitor can send shots over GSPro Open Connect v1 through its own software or a connector. You don't need our server to fly a shot. See which monitors work.

The game flies the numbers your monitor sends: ball speed, launch angle, horizontal launch, spin rate and spin axis. If your monitor measures the club, you also see club speed, club path, face angle, attack angle and impact location. Nothing is smoothed or adjusted.

Every round records the monitor you chose and the name its software reports. Radar and camera units measure the same swing differently, so leaderboards group players by monitor. The game knows these models by name:

FlightScope Mevo+ · FlightScope Mevo Gen2 · FlightScope X3 · Foresight GCQuad · Foresight GC3 · Foresight GCHawk · Foresight Falcon · Bushnell Launch Pro · Bushnell LPi · SkyTrak · SkyTrak+ · SkyTrak ST MAX · Uneekor EYE XO · Uneekor EYE XO2 · Uneekor EYE MINI · Uneekor EYE MINI LITE · Uneekor QED · Garmin Approach R10 · Garmin Approach R50 · Rapsodo MLM2PRO · ProTee VX · Open Launch Nova · Full Swing KIT · Trackman · Ernest Sports ES Tour Plus · Square Golf · Square Golf Omni

A monitor that isn't listed still works. Its rounds are saved as Other, with the name its software reports.

Real courses

Choose a golf course anywhere, and the game builds it from public map data, including OpenStreetMap.

Players build these courses. No golf club has licensed, approved, surveyed or checked any of them. Each one is a player's import of public map data and is only as accurate as that data. It isn't the club's official course, and we don't present it as one.
Published courses carry their map credit. OpenStreetMap data is under the Open Database License, and publishing a course shares that data with other players. We won't publish a real course without its credit. Players see the credit before they download. See licenses.

You can also draw your own course in the designer or have the game make one. Those courses are yours and contain no outside data. The showcase hole, Plumeria Cove, is a par 3 over water that comes with the game.

Players and practice

One to four golfers can take turns in the same hitting bay. Each player sets their own tees, handedness and club distances, and can customize a golfer's hair, clothes, shoes and headwear. You can save favorite looks and add a computer player at the handicap you choose.

Play stroke play, Stableford, skins, match play or a scramble. With the full game, you can play online with up to three friends at their own simulators, set up private matches and watch saved rounds again. Rounds saved to your account earn achievements that unlock looks for your ball, tracer, bag and name.

The practice range tracks dispersion and gapping for every club, and exports each session to a spreadsheet. Short game practice covers putting, chipping and bunker shots from distances you choose. Drills, skills games and a swing camera with one or two webcams round it out.

There are games for the whole family too: skee-ball you putt up a wooden lane on a pier, darts in a pub garden, battleship at sea and inflatable targets at a fairground. Block Blast knocks down towers across eight islands.

What your account stores

Your account starts the trial and runs the full game's online features. If you select GO OFFLINE on the game's ACCOUNT screen, nothing is sent. When you sign in to homenine.golf, the server keeps:

your email address and display name;
your finished rounds, hole by hole and shot by shot, with each shot's flight and any signed-in playing partners;
your profile: handedness, tees, the launch monitor you chose and the carry distances the game has learned;
courses you saved to the cloud, and whether you published them;
your friend code, friends, friend requests and private matches;
the achievements you've earned and what you chose in your locker;
your signed-in devices, so you can see and sign out of them;
a record of anything the server refused and why.

The server checks every round you post. If a round doesn't check out, it's saved but flagged with the reason. A flagged round can't be entered in an event.

The privacy policy has the full list, how long we keep it and who we share it with.

Ranked play and handicaps

Ranked play and the handicap index are switched off for now. Until the server can verify that a launch monitor measured each shot, rounds don't count toward a handicap and tournament entries are refused. Tour Week's open division is the exception, and its board marks rounds as unverified.

Every number the server receives comes from the game on your computer. Nothing proves that a real launch monitor measured a shot, that every attempt was sent or that the ball went in the hole. So the server stores every round as unranked and refuses tournament entries. No game setting or account can change that.

Tour Week's open division is the exception. It accepts rounds that can't be verified, and its board says so. All other rules still apply. Every shot must come from a launch monitor, and everyone plays the event's course in the same wind, weather, green speed and firmness. The verified division stays empty until verification exists.

Ranked play will turn on only when shots can come from a trusted device. No simulator can rule out every kind of cheating, and we won't claim to.