When the Curtis Cup Match tees off tomorrow at the 127-year-old Essex Country Club at Manchester-by-the-Sea in Massachusetts, the air will be filled with history and golfers from Hawaii.

Stephanie Kono, from Honolulu, and Kimberly Kim, who lived in Hilo until moving to Arizona for her high school years, combine to form 25 percent of the U.S. team, which takes on Great Britain. The teams are made up of the country’s finest female amateurs.

This is the 36th Curtis Cup and the U.S. leads the series, which started in 1932, by a 26-6-3 gap. That includes the last six, and Kim was part of the 2008 smackdown at St. Andrews.

"Kim Kim" just finished her freshman year at the University of Denver, taking classes as varied as creative expressions and acting. The hardest part, Kim told the USGA in a recent interview, was learning to speak up.

"Denver has like a 13-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio," Kim said. "And more than a full-letter grade is (class) participation. And I’m terrible at it."

Her golf can be very, very good. Last summer, Kim reached the championship of both the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links and U.S. Girls’ Junior, only to fall in finals. In 2006, at age 14, she became the youngest champion in U.S. Women’s Amateur history.

When she heard that Kono would join her on this team, Kim was ecstatic. "I just got 75 percent more excited about the Curtis Cup," she told the USGA.

After two years at UCLA, Kono has two first-team All-America plaques and three collegiate tournament titles. She is an art history major, which gives her a special appreciation for Essex Country Club and its historic third green, said to be the oldest in America.

The Curtis Cup went from a two-day event to a three-day competition in 2008. It now includes four-ball matches (best ball) along with foursomes (alternate shot) and eight singles matches Sunday—when the real pressure begins.

"Pressure is pressure," Kim said. "If you don’t feel it, then you don’t care."