PutterZone – Best Putter Reviews
The SeeMore Putter Company earns PutterZone.com’s Comeback Award for a putter company reasserting its relevance, and major tour recognition, in 2007.
This award is the latest in PutterZone.com’s 2007 Midyear Putter Awards, which began yesterday with the Next Level Award for the MacGregor Response DCT Putter. Stay tuned for the Heritage Award, Staying Power Award and Anticipation Award.
While the SeeMore Putter Company has forged an epic comeback in 2007, the SeeMore putter itself never really went away. Indeed, though the company suffered from mismanagement and flirted with oblivion over the past several years, its putters continued to thrive on tour in the hands of such young guns as Zach Johnson and Vaughn Taylor, as well as their putting instructor, Pat O’Brien—a former SeeMore tour representative and good friend of the late Payne Stewart. It was Stewart who first cemented the SeeMore legend by one-putting the last three holes with his SeeMore putter to win the 1999 U.S. Open by one stroke.
SeeMore’s ace in the hole was its signature RifleScope Technology, through which the shaft visually intersects and hides a red dot on the putter crown to communicate ideal alignment. SeeMore’s putters were proven, but the SeeMore Putter Company ultimately failed to maximize its potential.
In 2006, however, the sinking ship was acquired by putter industry veterans Jim Grundberg and Jason Pouliot. Rather than merely trying to turn a fast buck on a fading star, Grundberg and Pouliot took a much higher road, establishing a new long-term vision based on quality, tradition and next-level thinking. They also made the smart move of hiring O’Brien as their top consultant.
The turnaround was swift and forceful with the launch of SeeMore’s new precision-milled mSeries putters earlier this year, including the mFGP (pictured here), a new take on the FGP classic wielded by several tour pros, including Zach Johnson.
Indeed, when Zach Johnson won the 2007 Masters with his SeeMore in hand, it seemed more a declaration of fate than a matter of chance. PutterZone.com was on the SeeMore case well before the Masters, as evidenced here, and sensed the inevitable prior to the second round of the Masters, as evidenced here.
The new SeeMore business plan certainly wasn’t built on the longshot of Zach Johnson winning the Masters. But it didn’t hurt, either. It was ultimately a case of a putter company making its own luck. They may have had more orders to fulfill after the Masters, but the foundation for success had already been built.
This award wasn’t even close. SeeMore Putter Company is, hands down, the comeback putter company of 2007.
