This morning's Hawai'i State Women's Golf Association Match Play Championship final comes down to the long and short of it. As in Erin Long, who blasts the ball and was the sole non-teen semifinalist yesterday, and little Katie Sisler, a recent Punahou graduate who has found a way to finesse Oahu Country Club and every opponent into submission.

"Long and short" is an over-simplification for a game that is never simple, on a course with more quirks than flat lies, and with a format prone to intense highs and lows, often within seconds. But it does vividly describe the vast difference in the styles that have survived.

Long, whose last tournament was the 2004 Western Athletic Conference Championship, held off State Stroke Play champion Jaclyn Hilea, 3 and 1, to reach today's 8 a.m. final. It was a battle of golf bombers, with both capable of driving a few of OCC's par-4s from the front tees.

In contrast Sisler, 17, stopped Portland State junior-to-be Kayla Morinaga, 2-up, in a match of petite players who succeed with tenacity and a tendency to sink timely putts.

Morinaga, a 2005 Sacred Hearts graduate who was second to Hilea at Stroke Play, ousted two-time match play champion Bobbi Kokx in yesterday morning's quarterfinals. Morinaga drained a 25-foot par putt on the 18th for a 1-up win.

Sisler also went the distance. She took a 1-up lead over University of Hawai'i senior Lisa Kajihara on the ninth hole and made it hold up when they tied "every single hole" on the back nine.

Long, a 5-and-4 quarterfinal winner over UH sophomore Erin Matsuoka, and Hilea, who beat Puget Sound senior Emily Lau, 3 and 1, had it a bit easier. But nothing came easy on an idyllic day at OCC.

Long opened her match with Hilea eagle-birdie and held a 4-up advantage after six holes. It took another 2-plus hours to put Hilea away. With both golfers blasting big drives but struggling on the greens, Hilea held on and hung in to cut her deficit to two after 13 holes.

She is coming off a huge 2006 when she won the state high school team championship as a Moanalua senior, then captured the Hawai'i State Junior Golf Association State Championship and HSWGA Stroke Play.

Hilea then enrolled in the International Junior Golf Academy Postgraduate program and earned a golf scholarship to Furman, where she will start with summer school later this month.

"I've been off (school) for a year," Hilea said. "I figured I better get my brain back into it."

Long is also taking the golf road less traveled. She grew up in Napa and played for Nevada before burnout hit about three years ago. She quit and moved here in August for a management job with P.F. Chang's. A second job in the OCC pro shop reminded her how much she enjoyed golf.

"The (golf) bug came back when I got this opportunity," Long said. "I was out here all the time, learning more about golf than I probably ever have and I've had the chance to play with all kinds of people. I just love to play golf, I love to out-drive the boys and go out and play after work. It's fun and ... can you complain about this view everyday?"

Long is now studying to become a teaching pro — this is her final amateur event — and will take the Playing Ability Test this month. She wasn't planning to play this week but was encouraged by caddie Cal Smith's daughter-in-law — the tournament director — to enter when there were openings. It has become an often-too-realistic warmup for the dreaded PAT.

Long needed a squirrely, but only foot-long, par putt on the 16th to end her match. She missed it. She rallied with yet another huge drive on the next hole (328-yard par-4) — the ball stopped just short of the greenside bunker — and chipped to kick-in range to clinch it.

How did she get over the first miss? "You don't," Long admitted. "You've got to have a little more aggression behind the (next) ball, get it out then and there, and you're done. That's how I do it."

Sisler and Morinaga were never separated by more than two. Sisler took the lead for good at the 10th. She went 2-up when Morinaga hit out of bounds on the 13th. Both bogeyed the next hole from behind trees, but just when Morinaga was at her lowest, she bounced back.

She hit her second shot on the par-5, 544-yard 15th to the fringe and left her eagle putt an inch short to cut her deficit in half. Sisler got it back when she won the 16th with par, but Morinaga was flawless again on the 17th to make her deficit just one going into the final hole.

Sisler, headed to UC Davis, had yet another answer, as she has all week. She hit her second shot to the green and Morinaga — needing to win to extend the match — ultimately conceded the birdie putt when her desperation shots for birdie and par blew by the hole.

Her trouble started off the tee, when her drive was five yards away from Sisler's, but just long enough to be in a greenside bunker at the 15th. Morinaga actually hit her approach shot too well from the difficult lie and it went over the green.

"I hit it more solid than I expected," said Morinaga, an all-Big Sky golfer who led PSU in scoring this season and was just named an All-American Scholar for the second year.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.