By JOHN MARSHALL

When it comes to putting, it's all about how often the ball falls into the cup, not the look of the club that got it there,

There's been no shortage of putting quirks over the years, from the belly putter that Sergio Garcia and Vijay Singh use, the claw grip that Chris DiMarco helped to popularize and those stilt-like long putters that look like brooms.

The latest fad is an oversized grip - 1.67 inches in diameter - that makes it seem like the players are holding the barrel of a baseball bat. K.J. Choi used one to win the AT&T National last month, and a handful of other players have gone big.

But what advantage, if any, do they provide? We asked Tim Mitchell, an instructor at the David Leadbetter Academy at Red Sky Golf Course in the Vail Valley of the Colorado Rockies.

Q: What is the advantage of the fat putter grips?

A: "One of the biggest faults for most players when it comes to putting is they get too 'wristy'. They get a little flippy with their hands and therefore lose the ability to contorl distance and the direction of the face because the wrists get so active. So something bigger in their hands tends to minimize the wrist action of a putter. It just kind of makes it a little bit less wristy, a little more predictable, not as many variables with the fatter grip."

®2007 The Associated Press