You're Correct!

Controlling the speed of your putts is possibly the most important aspect in putting. It has more effect on the result of your putts than anything else.

Whether or not your putt starts on line, if you get the speed wrong you wont make many putts and youll have too many three putts, and maybe some four putts too!

As most of your attention on the green is on the line and how much break you should play, these aspects depend on your speed. You could start a putt on your aim line, and if your speed is too much then the ball would run straight through the break and miss on the high side. The same putt with too little speed would see the ball break across the front of the hole as it ran out of speed, missing on the low side. Hitting the putt with the optimum amount of speed, your ball will take the break at the right point and finish in the hole.

The two missed putts you would almost certainly put down to mis-reading the green when the truth is the putts were just rolling with the wrong speed. If you are to truly control the speed of your putt, you must control the tempo of your stroke. The most efficient way for you to control your tempo is to allow your shoulders and arms to move the putter back and through, allowing the putter to stay square to the natural arc of the stroke.

The wrists must be kept firm through the entirety of the motion, and the arms must stay extended with the elbows relaxed. Allow the putter to move in the same way as you would see the pendulum of a grandfather clock swinging to and fro. The most important factor is to make sure that the tempo of the stroke is the same pace in both directions, tick-tock, just like the clock pendulum. Go to the practice putting green and place a tee in the ground. Try hitting some putts towards the tee whilst in your mind say tick-tock to keep the tempo in your stroke. This will start to help you to control your speed more.

Having a wristy putting stroke will increase your lack of speed control. Not only will the length of your stroke vary with every putt, but you will have a big issue with decelerating at times as a reaction to hitting putts with too much speed.

Too much acceleration in your forward stroke will make it very difficult for you to control the speed of your putts. This is due to the fact that you dont know by how much your speed increases in each stroke. A stroke with a more constant speed in both directions would enable you to control your speed more consistently.

The first thing you need to look at when it comes to speed control is that it is a skill, and not something that you can buy. Changing your putter to have a softer feel off the face at impact will only aid your feel. Your speed control is something you need to learn.