Yugoslav Club Team Wraps Up Its Tour : Water polo: Partizan, training with the U.S. national and junior national teams, plays three matches tonight at Newport Harbor High.

Yugoslavia has the water polo world on the run. Winners of two consecutive Olympic gold medals and a world championship in between, the Yugoslavs have built a water polo dynasty near the Adriatic Sea.

The United States water polo team won silver medals in the 1984 and ’88 Olympics.

“They’re good because they have good athletes, they’re well-coached and they have a great club system over there,” U.S. Olympic Coach Bill Barnett said.

That’s one reason United States Water Polo, Inc., the national team’s governing organization, has helped bring one of those clubs over here.

For the past two weeks, Club Partizan, the leader midway through the Yugoslav national championship season, has been training in California with the U.S. national and junior national teams and playing matches against local club teams.

Partizan, sporting a number of current and former members of the national team, will finish its tour with three exhibition matches against three Southern California club teams at 7 tonight at the Newport Harbor High School pool. Partizan will play the Beach, Bruin and Harvard clubs in consecutive two-period matches.

Partizan is coached by Ratko Rudic, who was coach of the Yugoslav national team during its Olympic and world championship successes.

After the victory in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Rudic stepped down as coach of the national team. Rudic, who competed in more water polo matches--297--than any other Yugoslav player, took over Partizan, a club for which he once played.

In Yugoslavia, the club water polo season runs from October through June and the sport is third in popularity to soccer and basketball, Rudic said. The system allows players to continue competing into their prime water polo years--25, 26, 27--Rudic said.

Rudic said the current tour is helping his team get used to playing against different competition in unfamiliar surroundings. He said U.S. water polo was also benefiting.

“Yugoslavia is the best in the world in water polo but also the USA is second,” Rudic said. “For me, we want to stay first and if the USA wants to be first, we have to be (compete) together. It’s very important. I don’t know if the people from the United States understand.”

Apparently they do. In preparation for the Goodwill Games this summer in Seattle and the world championships in 1991 in Perth, Australia, U.S. Water Polo is bringing in as many foreign teams as possible. Teams from Cuba, Australia, Hungary and the Soviet Union have commited to practice with the U.S. team here later this year.