When the SeeMore putter was introduced in 1997, it was a unique and novel idea — use the shaft to hide the red dot between the two white lines on the heel of the putter and the face will be perfectly square to the target. The alignment aid was simple and effective. But no one on the PGA Tour was using a SeeMore and everyone knows a massive number of consumers take their cues from the best players in the world.
But 1999 changed the entire trajectory of SeeMore Putter Co. when Payne Stewart won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, including holing the iconic winning 15-footer on the 72nd hole, using the company’s original blade putter. With the SeeMore in hand, Stewart led the Tour in average putts per green (total greens) and finished second in putts per green in regulation that year.
After the U.S. Open, the company was flooded with orders and SeeMore was officially part of golf’s putter conversation. The company called the alignment aid RifleScope Technology, but everyone knew just to hide the red dot at address. A few years later, Zach Johnson adopted the SeeMore blade and won two major championships with it — the 2007 Masters and the 2015 British Open.
Today, SeeMore has evolved from two basic models into a fully-formed product line with more than 40 models, including the company’s foray into the zero torque space — SBx and the SKx. All of which still use the original RifleScope Technology.
SeeMore has been owned for the last 20 years by Jim Grundberg and Jason Pouliot, who serve as co-CEOs. They are veterans of the putter wars, having worked with Odyssey from the time it was an upstart with a 5 percent market share to a major player with 40 percent share in 1999, when the brand was bought by Callaway.
During that time, SeeMore was sold to an investment group, which eventually went on to pursue other projects, leaving SeeMore essentially dormant. In 2005, Grundberg and Pouliot started talking about doing a project on their own and they eventually came across SeeMore.
“Stewart won the U.S. Open in the last year that Jason and I were at Odyssey,” Grundberg says. “We remembered that product being so visibly different. It was a throwback but it had sort of an ‘aha’ technology story. It was like, holy smokes, Stewart went from never one of the best putters on Tour to one of the best and had 24 putts in the final round of the Open.”
Stewart believed that SeeMore had validity but tragically, he died later in 1999 in the now infamous private plane crash that killed him and five others. By then, Johnson had started using the putter, as did Vaughn Taylor, who were considered two of the best young players at the time.
Johnson and Taylor were being taught by Pat O’Brien, the director of instruction at Lakewood Country Club in Dallas, who was also a SeeMore believer. O’Brien would go on to become a SeeMore brand ambassador.
“They were raving about this product, even though the product wasn't even in the marketplace at the time,” Grundberg said.
Grundberg and Pouilot acquired SeeMore and their first project was to make milled putters with RFT. “We looked at Scotty Cameron and Bettenardi, who were making nearly all of the high-end milled putters at the time,” Grundberg says. “We have this incredible technology, so if we can make them expensive and beautiful, it will be an even better technology.”
So, they introduced four milled offerings at the January 2007 PGA Merchandise Show, thinking this was going to be the new direction for SeeMore. Nearly three months later, Johnson changed the company’s plans. He won the Masters with an original SeeMore. That should have been the break Grundberg and Pouilot needed but they realized, “We don’t even have that putter,” Grundberg says.
Or so they thought. Actually, a large number of the RGP putters were in the company’s facility but in various stages of manufacturing and production. The previous owners had just halted production and left things unfinished.
“We found some new partners that could help us turn what we thought were just going to be paper weights back into product,” Grundberg says. “It was crazy. We weren't ready for it, but we had a lot of fun.”
In addition to its full product line, SeeMore now has entered the zero-torque space, even though the company believes the company’s original straight-line, center-shafted blade putter was zero torque before it was cool.
“Taylor used to take his putter and twirl it in his fingers and the head would just spin around,” Grundberg says. At no point during the spinning did it feel as if it was hitching or stopping or encountering any sort of resistance.
“And so here it is 20 years later that this story we've been trying to tell for so long, that besides our RifleScope Technology, there's just an inherent benefit of putters that are designed to help you return the face to square.”
