Having done live scoring from my phone while playing, it does not necessitate letting anyone else use your phone. How it worked in my group was I did the live scoring and in exchange, I didn't have to handle the paper card during the round. It always works out fine.
The PDGA has taken steps of late to make it easier to allow for players to live score their rounds. There is now an interface separate from the main tournament manager (pdga.com/score) and a password that can be set by the TD just for that interface (no more sharing the password for the entire tournament). And the interface is extremely light (no graphics) so it does not require a high bandwidth connection to be updated...if the phone has signal to text or make a call, it can update scores.
The only disadvantage to live scoring through PDGA.com (and probably uDisc as well) is that it requires some pre-round work to set up. If your tournament has too much morning walk-up traffic, there may not be time to set up live scoring unless you have a volunteer dedicated to setting it up separately from whatever other preparations are needed for the first round (someone doing the online work while others do the scoreport and scorecard prep). But if the field is pre-registered and all players are entered online in advance, live scoring is fairly easy to set up even the morning of the tournament.
With this new interface, my intention is to offer live scoring as an option at all my future events, provided there isn't a lot of morning-of changes needed. It only takes a line or two on the player program/caddy guide or a separate business card sized hand-out with the link for scoring and the password, and maybe some short instructions (though it is fairly intuitive once logged in). I think it makes a great additional feature for players that want it, and as it becomes a bit more commonplace, it won't be much of a burden either. The key thing is that it can't be expected to replace paper cards.
The PDGA has taken steps of late to make it easier to allow for players to live score their rounds. There is now an interface separate from the main tournament manager (pdga.com/score) and a password that can be set by the TD just for that interface (no more sharing the password for the entire tournament). And the interface is extremely light (no graphics) so it does not require a high bandwidth connection to be updated...if the phone has signal to text or make a call, it can update scores.
The only disadvantage to live scoring through PDGA.com (and probably uDisc as well) is that it requires some pre-round work to set up. If your tournament has too much morning walk-up traffic, there may not be time to set up live scoring unless you have a volunteer dedicated to setting it up separately from whatever other preparations are needed for the first round (someone doing the online work while others do the scoreport and scorecard prep). But if the field is pre-registered and all players are entered online in advance, live scoring is fairly easy to set up even the morning of the tournament.
With this new interface, my intention is to offer live scoring as an option at all my future events, provided there isn't a lot of morning-of changes needed. It only takes a line or two on the player program/caddy guide or a separate business card sized hand-out with the link for scoring and the password, and maybe some short instructions (though it is fairly intuitive once logged in). I think it makes a great additional feature for players that want it, and as it becomes a bit more commonplace, it won't be much of a burden either. The key thing is that it can't be expected to replace paper cards.