WEATHER DECISION LEAVES SOME UNFINISHED BUSINESS.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

The backdrop was the San Gabriel and San Rafael mountains, not the Japan Alps, and the course the women were navigating on Sunday was Oakmont Country Club, not Happo'one.

There was another significant difference between the second L.A. Women's Championship and the 18th Winter Olympics. The Nagano Olympic organizers didn't shorten the men's super-G and women's downhill runs at the first, second or third onslaught of bad weather, the better to crown champions in the men's super-G and the women's downhill and downhill combined without further inconvenience and delay to the competitors.

The LPGA, faced with a similar predicament after Saturday's deluge washed out most of the second round in the scheduled 54-hole tournament, trimmed the event to 36 holes rather than risk wreaking havoc with the travel plans of the players who are competing in the Hawaiian Ladies Open at Oahu later this week.

So it was the sudden-death victory that Dale Eggeling eked out under nearly cloudless skies earned her a trophy and an asterisk.

Never mind her one-hole playoff win over first-round leader Hiromi Kobayashi, would Eggeling, 43, have held onto her lead through 54 holes? Using last year's results as a barometer, her chances of winning her third tournament in 23 years on the tour would have been 35 percent. Consider: In 1997, the second-round leaders hung on to win in 13 of 34 events that went at least 54 holes.

Of the remaining 24 golfers who shared the lead or held it outright after two rounds, eight finished second, six were third, six wound up fourth, one was sixth and three finished worse than 10th.

Nancy Lopez, who won the only rain-shortened 36-hole event last year, flirted with her 49th career win on Sunday. She shot her way into a tie with Kobayashi at 4-under par with birdies on three of her first eight holes. But she dropped a stroke on the par-4 ninth, missed birdie putts of fewer than 10 feet on the 14th, 15th and 16th holes and bogeyed the 17th to finish in a seven-way tie for sixth at -1.

Lopez' mindset was the same as after she put the final touches on a second-round 66 that earned her the win at the Stockbridge Open in Georgia last April. Then and now, ``I would have liked to have played the last round,'' she said.

What honest competitor wouldn't?

LPGA commissioner Jim Ritts made the decision to shorten the tournament on Saturday afternoon when the skies showed no signs of clearing and the course was soggier than soda crackers crumbled into a cup of soup. Had he chosen to sleep on the decision he would have awakened to a brand-new outlook, one as clear and sunny as Lopez' disposition.

``We had some pretty decent days to play even though (Saturday) was ugly,'' Lopez conceded.

The next rainstorm isn't expected to roll into the Southland until late tonight, at the earliest. So if there had been a cut, the survivors conceivably could have come back today for a third round.

``I would have loved to have gone another round,'' Eggeling said, though the nervous giggle that punctuated that statement suggested she was relieved not to have had to tempt the fates.

``The way it turned out,'' she said, ``I'm extremely happy. At my age, you take (wins) any way you can.''

Far be it from us to deny Eggeling her fairytale ending. At least by shortening the tournament Ritts may have delivered many of his golfers from a traveler's nightmare.

For roughly half the L.A. Women's Championship field, the journey from L.A. to Queensland, site of the Australian Ladies Masters in two weeks, goes through Oahu.

Eggeling suggested a few storm clouds probably would have gathered over the airline check-in counters if this tournament had been stretched a day, causing more than a couple of golfers to miss their L.A.-to-Honolulu connections.

She has a point. Anybody who recently has traveled the increasingly hostile skies knows sinking a 15-foot putt on the first playoff hole to win $97,500 is a lot easier than trying to change an itinerary once a trip has been ticketed.

And yet, that's precisely what Eggeling was headed off to do after meeting with the media. She and her husband Mike were scheduled to leave for Honolulu on Sunday but decided they wanted to celebrate the night away at a local restaurant rather than on a cramped airplane.

``We'll try to fly stand-by,'' she said.

All we can say is it's probably a good thing for Eggeling she's not booked on Japan Airlines, which is a proud sponsor of . . . Kobayashi.