Party. Tennis. Match.

Sitting on the veranda of the Balboa Bay Club Racquet Club, Ed Lowman is fretting, fretting, fretting. For three courts down, two pals of his--a man and woman team--are losing, losing, losing.

As he watches the sad scene from under his straw hat, Lowman’s concern is a simple one. “This,” he says, “could spoil the party. And that would be a bummer.”

Ah, yes it would. For this is one tennis tournament where Lowman brings not two cans of balls, but two magnums of champagne.

It’s time again for the Adoption Guild Tennis Tournament. The 36th time, to be exact, for the event that became the model of the charity play-and-party tennis affairs.

Play and party. Party and play. It’s like the chicken and the egg. It’s hard to say which came first. Except that whichever was at the event’s core at its inception, the play or the partying, it sure wasn’t big, not like now, when it takes over four of the area’s sprawling private tennis clubs--three in Newport Beach and one in Irvine--for two weekends, drawing everyone from name pros to, well, the Ed Lowmans. “There is,” he declared, “nothing like it.”

There were just 68 entrants in 1961, when local tennis enthusiasts decided to stage a doubles tournament as a modest fund-raiser for the Holy Family Services Counseling and Adoption Agency in Santa Ana. In those days, the problem it addressed, helping what were then called “unwed mothers,” seemed modest too. The problem, and the event, grew together.

By 1966, 363 teams entered in the Adoption Guild tournament, and the roster included players like Billie Jean King. Two decades later, in 1988, the event drew an astounding 1,050 doubles teams, solidifying its reputation as the largest tournament of its type anywhere.

Though the number of entrants has dropped quite a bit since that peak of the tennis boom, down to the 500 range, that’s partly because there now are competitors.

Earlier in the spring, many in the same crowd flock to the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades for a tournament that benefits the Boy Scouts. Then, at the end of summer, it’s back to Orange County for the CHOC affair, which benefits the Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

There are, of course, oodles of other tennis tournaments. But most, like the ones sponsored by the United States Tennis Assn. and its local arm, the Southern Calif. Tennis Assn., are no-nonsense affairs.

What’s more, the official tennis association events are often held in public parks. Sometimes with slick, dusty courts. Sometimes with holes in the nets. Sometimes with apartment complexes ringing the courts.

The Adoption Guild’s entry fee of $100 per team, in contrast, gets you two weekends at the Palisades Tennis Club (which recently hosted a Davis Cup match); the Newport Beach Tennis Club (with three dining areas--two outdoors, one indoors--overlooking center court); the Balboa Bay Club Racquet Club (scene in recent years of the gala party); and finally, the Racquet Club of Irvine (which has not only conventional hard courts but also clay courts and Astroturf courts and . . . you get the idea).

Then there are the prizes. In most tournaments, that means a conventional trophy featuring a plastic tennis figure posed in the serving position--the sort of abomination 13-year-old kids love to display in their room but which most adults stuff in a drawer.

But here? Listen to one of Lowman’s friends, Elizabeth Altieri, recall the reward for winning one of the lower divisions in women’s doubles a few years ago:

“Let’s see, you get a crystal serving plate. By Tiffany. And your name on a perpetual trophy. And your photo in the next year’s tournament program. And they come out to center court with a bottle of champagne and four glasses. Why do you think we keep coming back?”

*

Such rewards, though, and the prestige of the title, mean that one should not be misled by the fact that this is doubles, the generally social game most folks actually play when they play tennis for fun. This is a competitive crowd--make no mistake about it. Most tennis players flee in the other direction when they hear what one club pro here calls the “T-word,” for tournament--especially one that is outside the safe confines of their own club, where at least they know the enemy. Here any stranger in white shorts could be the messenger of total humiliation.

Except in the lowest divisions, which include some beginning players, the Adoption Guild pairings sheets are filled with experienced, zealous competitors--including teaching pros, club champions and former college players. Players are matched according to ratings, beginning at the 3.5 level in this tournament, on up. In the Open division (which offers healthy prize money--$5,000--in addition to the Tiffany plate), pro players and college All-Americans tend to dominate.

Ed Lowman was top man on his high school team in Burbank and once played Stan Smith, who went on to win Wimbledon. But Lowman graduated from high school in 1958 and though he had a college scholarship offer, he devoted himself instead to family and work--a career in what he calls the “benefits” trade, known to most of us as insurance.

Now, four decades after his high school playing days, he’s content to be a “B” club player, mostly in L.A., where he has a Century City office, but also many weekends here at the Palisades Tennis Club. It’s with his L.A. tennis friends, however, that he’s made the Adoption Guild a tradition.

The tournament this year has draw more than two dozen players from his Toluca Lake Tennis Club, in the small community adjoining Universal Studios best known as the home of Bob Hope. Most turn it into a Memorial Day weekend retreat, staying at the Hyatt Newporter, right next to the Palisades club. That’s the big weekend of the tournament, after all, when everyone plays the preliminary rounds--leaving only the top four teams in each division to battle it out this coming weekend.

Lowman was scheduled to play first in the men’s doubles 4.0 division, paired with a real estate investor friend from his club. He checked in Saturday morning at the Newport Beach Tennis Club, greeted there by one of the ever polite Adoption Guild “patronesses,” the local women who plan the event (there’s an annual spring tea too) and arrange for donated goods and services so most of the entry fees actually benefit the charity--$68,000 going to Holy Family Services last year.

All the expected perks of a high-end tournament are in place: a long table with giveaway goodies (here Fila T-shirts and baskets of apples, bottled water and high-energy Power Bars); a court-side bar of the liquid sort; and a “Health in Action” massage table with a masseuse well-practiced at caring for aching backs--$10 for 10 minutes.

Lowman looks like he could use 10 minutes or more as he comes walking off his court after playing for little more than an hour. It’s an opponent who is being congratulated by a spectator, who says, “You guys look good as a team.”

So do a pair of young women playing on Court 3. They are dressed in matching white-and-black striped tennis skirts, black tank tops and black visors. “They can play, too,” Lowman notes.

But the Newport Beach Tennis Club also provides a humbling reminder of the levels of the game--what it means to really play. For the center court all weekend features marquee matches at the highest levels, like one pairing the defending pro champions, who are local favorites of sorts--former UC Irvine stars Mark Kaplan and Bruce Man Song Hing--against some surprise last-minute entrants: this year’s top-ranked collegiate doubles team, from Texas Christian University. The college kids have just come from the NCAA championships at UCLA and are taller, stronger and quicker than the defending champs--but less experienced. So the kids dominate most of the match. Until the pressured final moments. Then the “old guys” hang on.

Although such contests draw the bulk of the spectators, the outside courts have their crowds too--clusters of family members and friends offering support. So Lowman wanders the grounds to support several teams from his delegation, then heads back to the hotel to clean up before the Saturday night party at the Balboa Bay Club Racquet Club. He gets there early, though, because the best mixed-doubles team from his crowd has a 4 p.m. match there.

It features his club’s top woman singles player, Wantana Martinelli--a slight woman who learned tennis in her native Thailand before coming to the U.S. and finding work as a film animator. She is partnered with a former teaching pro, who has arms like Popeye . . . after he’s eaten spinach. Their opponents from Irvine, however, are favored, being the No. 3 seeds in the 5.0 division.

It proves to be a marathon, a classic L.A. versus Orange County battle. The first set takes an hour (the locals win), and then there’s a dispute over the score. The two sides argue for a full 10 minutes, emotions rising. That’s what gets Lowman worrying: If his friends lose now, the whole party, and the weekend, could grow somber. But they miraculously fight off a match point and begin to turn the tide.

A crowd of 50 is watching now, even as long tables of food are being set up nearby and a band arrives with its equipment.

“This is the first little ruckus we’ve had all day,” says Bob Ogle, general manager of the tennis club, who has joined the group watching the hot-tempered match. “No one’s been duking it out in any other match. But this one is taking forever.”

It’s 6:30 p.m. before it’s over: a comeback victory for Lowman’s friends.

“All is saved,” he says.

Another friend, Staci Treloggen, brings the victorious Wantana Martinelli a shot of tequila as she leaves the court.

Treloggen, 30, an L.A.-area real estate sales executive, reports that she has prepared for the weekend with “a manicure, pedicure and bikini wax, of course. You can’t play in a tennis tournament without them. All the men buy new tennis shoes, right?”

She seeks out her mixed-doubles partner, Rafael Arroyo, who runs a body shop that specializes in high-end jobs on Ferraris, Mercedes and the like.

She asks him, “What are you going to wear?”

He rolls his eyes skyward.

“OK, what color shorts did you bring?”

He says, “White, tan and dark blue.”

She says, “OK, just remember, don’t wear striped panties under your white shorts.”

“Don’t what?”

“Well, remember when Suki . . .”

Arroyo puts his hands up in surrender and leaves for the dance floor--to join his 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, the first one to boogie to the sounds of the “Surftones.”

They are playing the oldies tune that goes “Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear . . .”

Lowman and his crew party till 10, then head back to the hotel to rest up for the next day’s matches, which start at 8 a.m. Play or party? Party or play?

The next morning, the group’s elite doubles team, featuring the tequila-drinking Martinelli, comes up flat against a veteran pair that hit every ball right at her--and keep it away from her muscular partner. They’re out.

But who wins?

Lowman and his mixed-doubles partner, Kathy Coss, the wife of a former teaching pro. So do Treloggen and Arroyo, the car man with the dancing daughter.

Both those teams are in Monday’s quarterfinals in the 4.0 division, one match away from making the prestigious second weekend of the Adoption Guild tournament.

That night, they have a barbecue at the condo of another club member, dermatologist Mike Miller, who is also alive with his mixed-doubles partner.

And this too is a bummer of sorts--for no one dares drink much. After all, why risk it? “Until today,” says Treloggen, “I thought this was all about the partying. Now I’m not too sure.”

In what will be among the last matches of Memorial Day, Treloggen and Lowman’s teams each face brutal battles with teams from Orange County. The sun is almost setting, the air getting a chill, when their dreams are chilled as well: Each loses crucial tiebreakers en route to defeat.

“You know what they say,” Lowman declares. “Better luck next year.”