By JAY ALLRED

Two major travel facilities will open in North Carolina in September. The 216-room Ballantyne Resort hotel will open Sept. 5 giving the Charlotte area its first resort, and the elegant Mad Boar restaurant in Wallace will be finished by Labor Day. The large restaurant is part of the River Landing complex just off I-40 in Duplin County. The Ballantyne Resort hotel overlooks the golf course that opened in 1998 and was named "best new course of the year" by the North Carolina Magazine Golf Panel.

In addition to a new restaurant, River Landing in Wallace has a new clubhouse and a fourth nine on the drawing board. Both are scheduled to open in 2002. Clyde Johnston, a North Carolina native who now lives on Hilton Head Island will also design the fourth nine.

The Atlantic Coast Conference men's golf championship returns to the Old North State Club on Badin Lake for the next three years after a one-year absence. The ACC women's golf championship will return to Salem Glen Country Club in Clemmons.

Linville Golf Club in the mountains underwent a small renovation this spring to determine how the membership would react to the changes. This fall the remaining bunkers will be reconfigured and many details Donald Ross originally designed will be restored.

The new Spa at Pinehurst Resort, whose steel structure has now risen on the grounds of the venerable Carolina hotel, will embrace its North Carolina roots in both form and function. The front façade will include twin towers and will be reminiscent of the conservatory that once stood between the original Carolina and the present hotel's East Wing. Construction of the 31,000-square-foot building began in December. In Spring 2002, the $12 million luxury spa will open to Pinehurst guests as the largest spa ever built east of the North Carolina mountains.

Four North Carolina residents were named to Golf Magazine's Top 100 Teachers in America List are:

Eric Alpenfels, Pinehurst Resort; Peggy Kirk Bell, Pine Needles; Ed Ibarguen, Duke University; and Dana Rader, Ballantyne Resort.

Mike Purkey of Davidson, a senior editor of Golf Magazine, is the new president of the Golf Writers Association of America. He will lead the seven hundred member organization for one year. Other presidents with a North Carolina connection were the late Dick Taylor of Pinehurst and native son Furman Bisher of Denton, sports columnist with the Atlanta Journal.

Paax Golf USA, based in Charlotte, recently introduced a new line of clubs to the golfing public. The Tri-Matrix line was developed at Paax headquarters in Australia and is now available locally. Demo days have been scheduled at several area facilities to profile the clubs to the public.

The Tri-Matrix line is unique because they are designed to give golfers three different feels in the same set. The long irons have hard, heat-treated faced with tungsten weighting in the sole, plus copper heel-and-toe weighting to get the ball airborne quickly. The mid-irons feature a little less weight in the sole to provide a middle ball flight and increased feel. The short irons, meanwhile, have no weighting and softer faces for better feel and control, and shafts with a higher kick point that doesn't launch the ball as high as the lower irons.

Well-known Davidson County attorney, James "Jim" E. Snyder Jr. now adds author to his resume with the publication of The Saga of Joe Monk: The Greatest Golfer of Olive Chapel. The mini-novel carries the reader through the life of a young black golf prodigy in the 1940s and '50s. The book may be ordered by calling 800-636-8329.

The Vantage Championship is planning for a big event with new dates, national television coverage, and new players. One new face will be part time professional golfer Bruce Lietzke. Lietzke's first event was the SBC Senior Open in July.

"I’m very excited about playing the Senior Tour," said Lietzke, who indicated he may enter one or two more events after the Vantage Championship. "My kids are getting close to getting out of school, so I’ll play the SENIOR TOUR as much as I can. I’ll probably play 20-22 events the first year or two, then increase that to 26-28 when the kids are in college. The Senior Tour will be my home for the next several years. I look forward to joining a lot of friends from my college days…so that will be fun."