GLADSTONE, N.J. — Christina Kim is Lee Trevino in a headband, on which she wears some of her emotions, for her sleeves are far too small to hold them.

Actually, all those panels the artist Christo draped around Central Park last year might not be enough to contain everything about someone who is to Michelle Wie what Metallica is to Yanni.

Which is why the HSBC Women's World Match Play Championship at Hamilton Farm Golf Club, where form basically held yesterday, could pump up a notch today by as entertaining a match as the tournament might produce — short of a Wie-Annika Sorenstam final, that is.

Kim versus Wie in the second round is boisterous vs. demure, passion vs. poise, uninhibited vs. reserved — yin vs. yang between close friends who often talk about "fashion, shoes, boys, cars," Kim said, and exchanged text messages when Wie tried to qualify for the men's U.S. Open last month in Summit.

Kim, who opened with a 2 and 1 victory over South Korea's Joo Mi Kim while Wie knocked off Brazil's Candy Hannemann, 5 and 3, despite losing the first two holes, knows that if she ousts her 16-year-old opponent, executives from CBS (which is showing the event this weekend) might leap from buildings.

"If I were to end up beating her, I would be able to look her in the eye and chug a beer because I'm legal and she's not," Kim, 22, said of beating Wie, before adding this postscript: "I'm kidding."

Yet, she doesn't kid when it comes to match-play golf, of which she said (while audibly growling for emphasis), "It requires toughness, it requires definitely a desire to want to be there and, you know, cut-throat, kill, kill. . . . I do that with a smile on my face, though."

The smile of a player who admits to the match-play gamesmanship that most of her peers don't, such as failing to concede an opponent's short putt. The smile of a two-time winner on the LPGA Tour who's seeded 34th in the HSBC's 64-player field and relishes the opportunity to measure herself against the prodigal Wie — while making sure people notice her.

"I love being in the spotlight," she said. "I love pleasing people and making a fool of myself and showing off. That's the kind of nature I have."

To her, today is a stage on which, if she and Wie were Marx Brothers, Kim would be the chatty Chico and Wie the mute Harpo.

"It's going to be one of the loudest crowds of the day and I'm guessing that they won't all be rooting for me," Kim said. "I think I can work my charm and convert a few."