Golf is mostly an individual sport, so the few times you can be part of a national team representing your country, truly stand out. Jim Rutledge of Victoria, announced Monday for induction into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in the Class of 2023, cited representing sa国际传媒 in three World Cups and two Dunhill Cups as among his leading career highlights.
“Playing with Mike Weir and Dave Barr in the World Cup is something you never forget,” said Rutledge, after learning he will be enshrined in the Canadian Golf Hall.
The induction ceremony will take place during the RBC Canadian Open on June 6 at the Oakdale Club in Toronto.
“It’s a fabulous honour,” said Rutledge.
It follows the 63-year-old’s induction into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame with the Class of 2022 and the sa国际传媒 Golf Hall of Fame with the Class of 2011.
“You don’t set out in your career thinking you will make Halls of Fame. While you are playing, you just put your head down and go about your business week to week, not thinking about things like that,” said Rutledge.
But those weeks all add up.
“Now is when it hits you and you get to sit back and think about it all,” said the Uplands member. “And it makes you feel a little bit old. But hopefully I’m not done, yet.”
He certainly isn’t and proved that by winning the 2022 PGA Seniors Championship of sa国际传媒 last summer in Medicine Hat, Alta., for his seventh title in the event, one behind the record of eight held by Canadian golf legend Moe Norman.
Now Rutledge joins the likes of Norman, Barr, Stephen Ames, Gary Cowan, Lorie Kane, Stan Leonard, George Knudson and fellow-Islanders Violet Pooley-Sweeny, Margaret Todd, Alison Murdoch, Dawn Coe-Jones and Pat Fletcher among the 85 inductees in the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame.
“You never think you’re going to join a list like that,” said Rutledge.
He once recalled spending countless hours growing up with friends on the Cedar Hill Golf Course “living off hot dogs, Cheezies and pop.” It led to winning the Canadian juvenile and junior championships before turning pro at 19 and playing more than 20 years on the Canadian and Asian tours, winning the Indian Open at Delhi in 1995 and New Zealand PGA Championship in 2006. Rutledge played four years on the European Tour (now DP World Tour) before joining the PGA Tour for 2007 and later the PGA Champions Tour. He is a six-time winner on the PGA Tour sa国际传媒 and won the 1984 PGA of sa国际传媒 championship. Rutledge also played on the Nationwide Tour (now Korn Ferry Tour) from 2001-2009.
During the 2010 Telus Skins Game on Bear Mountain, former PGA Tour star Fred Couples of Seattle acknowledged being on the Island, and mentioned his great battles against Rutledge during their Pacific Northwest junior days. That was quite the shout out, considering Rutledge wasn’t in the Skins Game.
But Rutledge didn’t miss much else, including back-to-back appearances in the British Open in 1990 and 1991, making the cut in 1990.
“More than the trophies and scores, you look back on all the great places you have been to and great courses you have been privileged to play, like St. Andrews, and the people you met and friendships made along the way,” said Rutledge.
Also to be inducted with the Class of 2023 is celebrated 19th-century and early 20th-century golf writer Robert Stanley Weir, who also wrote the English lyrics to O sa国际传媒.
