TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS\Big names flock to Riviera.

Byline: Dave Shelburne Daily News Staff Writer

The West Coast swing of the PGA Tour sometimes gets the knock for less than powerful fields.

That won't be the case at the Nissan Open, which runs Thursday through Sunday at Riviera Country Club.

With the addition last week of John Daly and Fred Couples, this annual Los Angeles winter tournament has not only the champions from last year's four majors but also one of the Nissan's most popular players.

Call it the Grand Slam and a grand slammer.

Few players captivate golf fans the way the long-hitting Couples does - seemingly everywhere on tour but especially at the Nissan, where he routinely lives up to those "You the Man!" shouts that echo through Riviera's windblown eucalyptus trees each February.

The man the fans call Boom-Boom has won two of the past six Nissans and placed second in two others, much to the enjoyment of his large and boisterous galleries.

"The fans at Riviera have always been good to me, and so has the course," said Couples, who won in 1990 and '92 and waged a stirring final-round duel with Corey Pavin in '94. "I always look forward to playing in the Nissan Open."

This week, he can also look forward to the strongest field to date on the '96 tour.

Daly, the reigning British Open champion, joins Masters champion Ben Crenshaw, PGA champ Steve Elkington and U.S. Open champ Pavin - who is bidding for a record third straight title in the Nissan (formerly the L.A. Open).

Daly, the tour's undisputed biggest boomer, enjoys a sizable gallery of his own and always creates a buzz with his length off the tee.

The tour's driving leader four of the past five years, including a tour-record 289-yard average in '95, Daly staged a prodigious driving exhibition on the Santa Monica Airport runway during last summer's PGA Tournament. He had to hit into the wind that morning but managed a best of 550 yards - 375 on the fly.

With shot placement important on the tight, tree-lined fairways at Riviera, Daly might opt to leave his driver in the bag more often this week. His grip-it-and-rip-it fans, however, probably won't be disappointed. He went to that kind of a control approach in an international competition earlier this year and was hitting 1-irons 300 yards.

At the opposite end of the distance spectrum is Pavin, the former UCLA star who has brought the gutty-little-Bruin concept to the PGA Tour and thrived with it. He not only won last year's U.S. Open but did so while ranking last in driving in that 165-man field at Shinnecock Hills GC.

Elkington was last seen at Riviera clutching the Wanamaker Trophy after outlasting Scotland's Colin Montgomerie in a one-hole playoff at the PGA Championship in August.

But Elkington, an Australian import who now lives in Texas, was hardly finished winning locally. He returned to California in November to team with Mark Calcavecchia and win the Franklin Templeton Shark Shootout at Sherwood Country Club.

Crenshaw was a dramatic winner of his second Masters title last April - a week after serving as pallbearer for his longtime mentor, Harvey Penick.

The man known as Gentle Ben enters this week's play as the most successful of the four major champions, having totaled 19 tour victories - nearly as many as Pavin, Elkington and Daly have, combined (23).

Other entries include former U.S. Open champions Tom Kite (1992) and Scott Simpson ('87), former Masters champion Craig Stadler ('82) and former PGA champion Hal Sutton, who edged out Jack Nicklaus to win that title at Riviera in 1983.

The field also includes rookie of the year Woody Austin, comeback player of the year Bob Tway, Tour Championship winner Billy Mayfair and two newcomers who are impressing at opposite ends of the generation gap.

Justin Leonard, the youngest rookie on last year's tour, made 25 of 31 cuts in '95 and at age 23 has already placed second in three tournaments.

Allen Doyle, at 47 the oldest rookie in PGA Tour history, has made four of five cuts in an outrageously successful tuneup for the senior tour.

Nissan notes: The tournament lost a popular local hero last week when former Taft High School star Duffy Waldorf, the 1985 college player of the year at UCLA, underwent minor knee surgery.

Waldorf was looking forward to his 12th Nissan at Riviera and was coming in on a hot streak extended by his top-20 finish (12-under-par) at the Buick Invitational.

He also was a top-20 finisher in last year's U.S. Open and PGA Championship before securing his first tour win in the late-season La Cantera Texas Open for his first tour victory. Waldorf concluded his most successful year by teaming with Tom Lehman to win the Diners Club matches in December. He is expected to return to tour play in a month. . . .

Practice rounds start today at 1 p.m. and will continue Tuesday, when there also will be a long-driving exhibition at 11 a.m. and a 10-player, nine-hole shootout worth $12,650 to the surviving pro. The shootout starts at 1 p.m. Pro-Am play is scheduled for Wednesday.

Open tournament play starts at 7 a.m. Thursday and Friday and at 8 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.