WORTH NOTING ON TV

* SATURDAY

British Open (ABC, 10 a.m.- 2 p.m., EDT): Those who feel playing golf is a bore, much less viewing it on TV, may still decide to catch some of this broadcast - if only for the setting: St. Andrews, ''birthplace of golf'' and site of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in Fife, Scotland.

Third-round coverage of the 124th edition of the historic tournament is live, and one of the players faced by this year's defending champion, Nick Price, is the great Arnold Palmer, a two-time champion (1961-62).

Tour de France (ABC, 4:30- 6 p.m.): Cyclists vie in the decisive final time trial in this phase of the world's best-known bicycle race. The reporters are Terry Gannon, Phil Liggett, and Paul Sherwen.

* SUNDAY

British Open (ABC, 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., EDT): Final-round coverage.

Tour de France (ABC, 5-6 p.m.): Same-day coverage of the race's final leg that ends with a sprint down the Champs-lysees in Paris. The winner collects $440,000 out of a total purse of $2.4 million.

* TUESDAY

Whitewater hearings (PBS, 9:30 a.m. to conclusion): PBS plans live coverage of the Senate's Whitewater hearings, although some public stations will air regular programs instead.

Dateline NBC (NBC, 10-11 p.m.): Eager and innocent, the young inner-city faces look out from a fourth-grade class photo taken 14 years ago. The school is P.S. 309 in Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Bedford-Stuyvesant section, where murders average about one a week. Last fall, ''Dateline'' producers tracked down some of those students to try to measure the impact of race and environment on their lives.

The project took some nine months, and this edition of the newsmagazine is the result. It travels from Brooklyn to South Carolina, chronicling how many of the children grew up. The program is part of NBC News's ''Black, White, and Angry,'' a week-long look at relations between the two races in the United States.

Please check local listings for these programs.