Frequently Asked Questions

STIMP is a golf network for anyone who loves the game. It brings together three things that have never existed in one place: a course and club intelligence database, a personal tool for tracking and rating the courses you've played, and a community for connecting with other golfers — whether you want to find a reciprocal round at a private club, see where your friends played last weekend, or just keep a running list of every course you've ever walked.

Everyone who plays golf. The guy who plays his local muni every Saturday and wants to keep track of his favorite tracks. The golfer who's curious about private club membership and wants to understand what's out there. The multi-club member looking to connect with other members and organize reciprocal rounds. If you play golf and want a better way to track it, research it, or share it with people who love it too — STIMP is for you.

The stimpmeter is the instrument used to measure green speed — a small tool that only golfers know by name. We liked the idea of building something in that spirit: a platform that gives golfers real, precise information and puts it to practical use. Plus, it's a great name.

Most golf apps do one thing: GPS, scoring, or tee time booking. STIMP is built around the broader experience of being a golfer — discovering new courses, keeping a record of where you've played, seeing what your friends think of a course before you go, and connecting with other golfers in a meaningful way. We also cover ground that no other platform touches: private club intelligence. If you've ever wanted to know what a club actually costs to join, or how its course stacks up against others you've played, that information lives here — contributed and verified by members who have firsthand experience.

STIMP is built around three core areas:

The Index is the course and club intelligence database. Verified ratings, slope, yardages, and — for private clubs — member-contributed fee data. It's the reference resource golfers have always needed and never had.

The Scorecard is your personal golf record. Rank the courses you've played against each other, tag them with notes like "fast greens" or "walkable," and follow a feed of where your connections have been playing. Your golf history, ranked and organized the way you see it.

The Clubhouse is the community layer. Connect with other golfers, find reciprocal round opportunities, build relationships through the game, and interact with people who share the same love of golf you do.

Not at all. Use The Index to research courses and clubs. Use The Scorecard just to keep track of where you've played. Join The Clubhouse if the community aspect appeals to you. They're designed to complement each other, but each one works on its own. Most people find that the more of the platform they explore, the more useful each part becomes.

STIMP works on any device through your web browser today. A native iOS app is on the way and will be available in the App Store when it's ready. We'll let members know as soon as it launches.

The Index is STIMP's course and club database. It covers verified course ratings, slope by tee, par, and yardages for courses across the country. For private clubs, it also includes member-contributed fee data — initiation costs, annual dues, and other figures that clubs don't typically publish anywhere. It's the resource you wish existed the last time you were trying to figure out what a membership actually costs, or whether a course is worth the trip.

Course data — ratings, slope, yardages, and par — is available to all users for free. Private club fee data is unlocked through a simple contribution mechanic: submit your own home club's fee information and you'll get access to the full database. It's a fair exchange — share what you know, access what others have shared. If you're not a private club member, all the course data is still fully available to you.

It's contributed by members who have firsthand knowledge — people who actually pay those fees. That's what makes it reliable: it comes from inside the clubs, not from guesswork or outdated public records. Members submit their home club's current figures to unlock access to what others have contributed.

We currently have over 860 confirmed private clubs in the database, with strong early coverage in the NY/NJ area and national expansion ongoing. Course data is verified across multiple tee configurations, with confidence flags on each entry so you know how reliable the information is. If something looks off or your course isn't listed, you can flag it or submit it directly from the platform.

The Scorecard is your personal log and ranking of every course you've played. Add courses, rank them against each other, tag them with descriptors like "fast greens," "walkable," or "great finishing holes," and build up a record of your golf history over time. It's part diary, part personal rankings list, part social feed — yours to build however you want, whether you've played 10 courses or 500.

Rather than assigning a simple star rating, you rank courses relative to each other — comparing them against other courses you've personally played. The more courses you add, the more refined your personal rankings become. You can also tag each course with descriptors that capture what made it memorable: the quality of the greens, how walkable the layout is, the conditioning, the scenery, and more.

Your personal rankings generate your own STIMP Rating for each course. Those individual ratings roll up into a composite STIMP Rating for the course, which reflects the aggregate view of everyone in the community who has played it. The more members rate a course, the more meaningful that composite score becomes.

Your STIMP Score is your personal profile rating on the platform — a number that reflects your activity and engagement across STIMP. It grows as you log more courses, make more connections, record more rounds, and refer new members to the community. Think of it as a measure of how embedded you are in the golf world, not just how well you play it.

Yes. Your Scorecard includes an activity feed showing where your connections have recently played, how they ranked courses, and any tags or notes they've chosen to share. It's the golf version of what people have always done naturally — "I just played that course, here's what I thought" — surfaced in one place without turning into a social media feed you have to manage.

The Clubhouse is the community layer of STIMP — a place to connect with other golfers, organize rounds, and build relationships through the game. It's where you find a playing partner at a course you've been wanting to try, set up a reciprocal round through a connection's club, or just interact with people who love golf as much as you do. Think of it as the 19th hole, extended well beyond the boundaries of any one club.

The Clubhouse is open to golfers broadly, with a referral and application process to keep the community genuine. Private club members who verify their membership unlock the full feature set, including club-specific networking and reciprocal round tools. Golfers without a private club affiliation are welcome too — access is based on fit and a real connection to the game, not which club you belong to.

Connect with golfers across clubs and regions. Find and organize reciprocal rounds at courses you want to play. Build real relationships through a shared passion for the game. Meet playing partners for trips, local rounds, or just to swap recommendations. The Clubhouse is for anyone who has realized that some of their best golf experiences happened because of who they knew, and wants more of that.

The Clubhouse is available for an annual membership fee. Founding members — the first cohort admitted to the platform — lock in preferential pricing for the lifetime of their membership. Pricing details are shared directly during the application process.

STIMP is currently referral-only. To join, you need to be referred by an existing member. Once referred, you'll receive an invitation to submit an application, which is reviewed and approved by our team before your account is activated. This process exists to keep the community intentional — every member joins because someone already in the network vouched for them.

If you haven't been referred yet but are interested, reach out at admin@stimp.club and we'll do our best to connect you with someone in our network. In the meantime, course data and basic features are available to explore without an account.

Yes. Course data through The Index and personal round tracking through The Scorecard are free. The Clubhouse network and the private club fee database require a membership. The free tier is genuinely useful — the membership unlocks the layer where verified data and a vetted community come together.

No — a GHIN handicap is not required to join STIMP. You can sign up, explore the platform, and use The Scorecard without one. A GHIN is only needed if you want to verify a private club membership, which unlocks the club-specific features within The Clubhouse. If you have a GHIN, connecting it is quick and opens up the full experience for private club members.

When you join STIMP, you're given the ability to refer other golfers to the platform. Referrals matter — they're part of how your STIMP Score grows, and they're how the community expands in a way that maintains its quality. Every person you refer who gets approved becomes a connection in your network, and the platform gets a little more useful for everyone as it grows.