You're Correct!

If you constantly see your putts finishing short of the hole then you can guarantee that your putter head is almost certainly slowing down (decelerating) through the impact area. One of the most common causes of your putter decelerating through impact is due to the length of your back stroke.

On average, when you have a putt of around 10 feet in length, you are more likely to move the putter over 18 inches in the back stroke. This will cause a subconscious panic to set in thinking that you are about to hit the ball too far past the hole so your brain tells you to slow down. Not only do you start to slow down before impact, but you also stop the follow through at around your front foot too. One of the best ways to cure this problem is to create a formula for the length of your back stroke to fit the length of your putt. If you follow these points and keep practising them you will maintain the speed of your stroke and have a lot less putts stop short of the hole.

• Firstly, make sure when you take your set up position that your stance is the width of your shoulders. Now you are in a position to be able to use the feet as a guide to the length of your putting stroke. Take half a dozen balls and place them next to a tee peg on the practice putting green. Now take four normal steps and place another tee peg into the green.
• You need to make a back stroke that moves no further back than the toes on your trailing foot and then make sure the stroke finishes beyond your front foot. As long as the tempo of the stroke is the same in both directions, you will not have decelerated and you should see that your ball is fairly close to the tee peg you have put into the green four steps away.
• Next, put a tee peg at six steps, eight steps and 10 steps taking care to note how much further your back stroke moves in relation to your trailing foot. If you continue to keep the speed constant then you will see more of your putts finish up alongside or beyond the tee peg.

If when you putt your view is to get the ball beyond the hole then you will most likely get the distance control with 30% - 40% of your putts. The rest of the putts you hit will generally finish more than the optimum 12-18 inches beyond the hole, leaving you with a few tricky putts to avoid three putting.

Having a putter that is heavy is more of an advantage when it comes to putting. You are more likely to hit your putts beyond the hole rather than leave them short due to the fact that the extra weight will allow the putter head to flow through your stroke with greater ease.

If you had a short putting stroke then you would be more inclined to see your putts run beyond the hole. This is due to more of a short, jabbing motion that the short putting stroke will create. Controlling the distance of your putt is a bit of a lottery with this stroke type.