THE BRITISH OPEN : The Best Are at St. Andrews : Golf: Norman is favored to win his second major championship against an elite field.

Greg Norman would like to win his second. So would Nick Faldo and Sandy Lyle. Mark Calcavecchia would like to make it two in a row.

Ian Woosnam, Curtis Strange and Tom Kite would like to win their first. So would Jose-Maria Olazabal and Bernhard Langer.

Seve Ballesteros and Jack Nicklaus would like to win their fourth. Tom Watson would like a sixth to join all-time winner Harry Vardon.

And Arnold Palmer would like to make the cut and savor the atmosphere one last time.

Those are some of the more intriguing elements surrounding the 119th British Open, which opens today on the sacred--though pock-marked with bunkers--fairways of the Old Course of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

Some of the anticipated intrigue is missing, however, as placid summer weather has arrived on the northeast coast of Scotland instead of the chilling winds off the North Sea.

Norman is the betting favorite with British oddsmakers, who have posted the charismatic Australian at 9-1 to repeat his victory of 1986 on another Scottish course at Turnberry. He has won three tournaments this year--the Doral Open and the Memorial on the American PGA Tour and the Australian Masters, his country’s most prestigious event.

Curiously, the only cut he has missed in 14 tournaments was the Masters, where he got off slowly with a 78.

Norman’s only victory in a major tournament was in the ’86 British Open, but as he says, “It’s not because I haven’t been in the hunt.”

Who can forget the 1986 PGA, when Bob Tway holed out from a bunker to defeat Norman, or the 1987 Masters, when Larry Mize ran in a 140-foot chip shot to beat him in a playoff? Then in last year’s British Open, Norman appeared to be in command of a four-hole playoff with Calcavecchia and Wayne Grady, before he drove into a fairway bunker on the final hole and lost to Calcavecchia’s birdie.

“I have good memories of last year, and of the other two close ones,” Norman said Wednesday. “Certainly, I was disappointed, but I was watching a rerun on TV the other night and I thought I played very well.

“Unfortunately, my drive landed on a hard patch and ran into the bunker. It was 318 yards to the bunker. Still, to this day I wouldn’t hit any other shot.”

Norman sees the warm weather as an advantage for the better players, an opposite view from the usual thesis that blustery weather favors the more talented and experienced shotmakers.

“It rained here early in the week and softened the greens so that the guys were winging in iron shots and making them stick,” Norman explained. “That is not St. Andrews’ style, but if the sun stays out, it’ll dry up by Thursday and the greens will be hard and fast. Then we’ll see what happens.”

England’s Faldo is the popular choice, and over the past several years may be the hottest player in the field.

He has won three of the past 12 major championships and lost another in a playoff against Curtis Strange for the 1988 U.S. Open. His victories were in the 1987 British Open at Muirfield, where he made 18 pars in a row on the final day, and the Masters tournaments of 1989, the year of Scott Hoch’s missed 2 1/2-foot putt, and 1990.

Add to that the fact that he was only one shot back of winner Hale Irwin in the 1990 U.S. Open and finished with a 65 last Saturday in the Scottish Open at Gleneagles, and you have one confident golfer.

“Ball-strikingwise, (the U.S. Open) at Medinah was my best in a couple of years,” Faldo said. “I had two good runs in the last two majors--knock on wood--and I feel everything is coming together for this one.

“I thrive on the majors. Nicklaus used to look into the crowd on Sunday afternoon and say isn’t that great, and he was right. It’s what I’ve been working for. It’s what it’s all about.”

Faldo, after being touted for many years as Britain’s new hope, completely revamped his swing under the guidance of David Leadbetter in 1984. For two years, he was not a contender in a tournament anywhere.

“It was embarrassing,” Faldo recalled. “I was hitting thousands of balls in practice, but when I got on a course, I couldn’t get my score down. I spent most of my time trying to explain why the best I could shoot was 74 or 75.

“When I finally realized I had to make a change, even though I had led the European tour in earnings and had won in the United States, was at the British Open in 1983 at Royal Birkdale. I was in the lead with nine holes to play and couldn’t hold it. I knew I had to go back to work and make some changes.”

The breakthrough came in 1987, when Faldo dropped his El Foldo nickname with a victory in the Spanish Open under stormy conditions. Later that year, he added the British Open and started his roll of major accomplishments.

If there is a hotter golfer on the premises, it could be Woosnam, the stubby Welshman who came to St. Andrews with consecutive victories the past two weeks in the Monte Carlo Open, where he shot a 60, and the Scottish Open. The catch is, Woosnam has such a sore back that he may need a cortisone shot to be able to tee it up today.

“Winning the Open is what I have always wanted to win all my life,” Woosnam said, “so I will be on the first tee if I have to play on only one leg. I regard this as the ultimate championship, and St. Andrews is the ultimate course.

“As far as my back is concerned, sometimes when you get trouble like my back, you tend to play within yourself and swing easier, and maybe it’s in the back of your mind you are not going to do so well, and all of a sudden you are relaxed and you are playing well. Before you know it, you are in a position to win.”

Watson is another enigma. At 40, he is 10 years younger than seniors Nicklaus and Lee Trevino, and he is five years younger than Irwin, who followed his U.S. Open victory with a win in the Buick tournament before taking three weeks off.

Watson has won more British Opens on the Scottish links courses than anyone else. Four of his five have been in Scotland, and he needs a victory here to complete the Scottish Grand Slam. He came within a stroke of it in 1984 when he pushed his second shot on the 71st hole--the dreaded Road Hole, No. 17, up against a rock wall and lost to Ballesteros.

“I had not been back to St. Andrews since, until this week,” Watson said. “It was a bad shot at 17, I pushed it 20 yards to the right of the target but it was more than that that beat me. It was a combination of things, mostly three-putt greens and missed short birdie putts.

“The guy who wins here Sunday will be the one making those clutch putts.”

Watson had a warning for the under-40 set, however.

“When you’re young, you try to win every tournament,” he said. “When you’re older, you try to steal one now and then.”

The player who wins this one will conquer a course that is not only extremely old, but also extremely tough.

A team from Golf magazine rated the Old Course, by U. S. Golf Assn. standards, at 74.5 with a slope rating of 135 from the championship tees. A course of average difficulty has a slope rating of 113.