James Edgar Rutledge (born August 26, 1959) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

professional

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

er who currently plays on the

Champions Tour PGA Tour Champions (formerly the Senior PGA Tour and the Champions Tour) is a men's professional senior golf tour, administered as a branch of the PGA Tour. History and format The Senior PGA Championship, founded in 1937, was for many year ...

. Rutledge was born in

Victoria, British Columbia Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. T ...

. He won the Canadian Juvenile Championship in 1975 at the Gorge Vale Golf Club in Victoria and the Canadian Junior Championship in 1977. He turned professional in 1978. For the first 20 years of his career, Rutledge would play in

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an ...

in the winter and in Canada for the rest of the year. He did not do this from 1988 to 1992 though. During that time Rutledge was a member of the

European Tour The European Tour (currently known as the DP World Tour for sponsorship reasons), legally the PGA European Tour is the leading men's professional golf tour in Europe. The organisation also operates the European Senior Tour (for players aged fif ...

, where his best finish on the Order of Merit came in 1990 when he finished in 55th, earning £75,274. He played in his first major at the

1990 Open Championship The 1990 Open Championship was a men's major golf championship and the 119th Open Championship, held from 19 to 22 July at the Old Course in St Andrews, Scotland. Nick Faldo won the second of his three Open Championships by five strokes over ...

, where he was high on the leaderboard going into the weekend, but ended up finishing T-57. He played in his second and last major the following year at the

1991 Open Championship The 1991 Open Championship was a men's major golf championship and the 120th Open Championship, held from 18 to 21 July at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England. Ian Baker-Finch won his only major championship, two strokes ahead of r ...

but he missed the cut. Rutledge's best finish on the

Asia Golf Circuit The Asia Golf Circuit was the principal men's professional golf tour in Southeast Asia from the early 1960s through to the mid-late 1990s. The tour was founded in 1961 as the Far East Circuit. The first series of five tournaments was held in 1962 ...

Order of Merit was third in 1994 and 1995. He has finished third on the Canadian Tour's Order of Merit three times. He is one of the winningest players in Canadian Tour history, winning six times on tour. Rutledge was a member of the

Nationwide Tour The Korn Ferry Tour is the developmental tour for the U.S.-based PGA Tour, and features professional golfers who have either not yet reached the PGA Tour, or who have done so but then failed to win enough FedEx Cup points to stay at that level. T ...

between 2001 and 2009, except for 2007 when he was a member of the PGA Tour. Rutledge's first Nationwide Tour win in 2006 at the ING New Zealand PGA Championship, helped him finish in 14th on the money list, which earned him his PGA Tour card for 2007. As the second oldest rookie in the history of the PGA Tour, he was not able to retain his tour card. Rutledge only made 5 of 23 cuts, with his best finish coming at the

Mayakoba Golf Classic at Riviera Maya-Cancun The World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba is a professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour in Mexico, held at Playa del Carmen, south of Cancún. It debuted in February 2007 and was the first PGA Tour event in Mexico this century. Histo ...

where he finished T-31. He does not play in Asia anymore but still plays on the Canadian Tour. After turning 50 on August 26, 2009, Rutledge has made several appearances on the

, with some success. He earned conditional exempt status for the 2011 Champions Tour season, by finishing eighth at the final

qualifying school In professional golf, the term qualifying school is used for the annual qualifying tournaments for leading golf tours such as the U.S.-based PGA and LPGA Tours and the European Tour. A fixed number of players in the event win membership of the ...

tournament on November 19, 2010. Only the top five players in that event gained full status for 2011. He fully qualified for the 2012

after finishing tied for second at qualifying school in 2011.Freeman earns medalist honors at q-school
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Amateur wins

*1975 Canadian Juvenile Championship *1977 Canadian Junior Championship

Professional wins (9)

PGA Tour of Australasia wins (1)

¹Co-sanctioned by the

Nationwide Tour wins (1)

¹Co-sanctioned by the

PGA Tour of Australasia The PGA Tour of Australasia, currently known for sponsorship reasons as the ISPS Handa PGA Tour of Australasia, is a professional golf tour for men, owned and operated by the PGA of Australia. Official events on the tour count for Official World ...

Asia Golf Circuit wins (1)

Canadian Tour wins (6)

Other wins (1)

*2000 Niagara Classic

Results in major championships

CUT = missed the half-way cut
"T" = tied
''Note: Rutledge only played in The Open Championship.''

Canadian national team appearances

World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast As ...

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake strike ...

, 2006 *

Dunhill Cup The Alfred Dunhill Cup was a team golf tournament which ran from 1985 to 2000, sponsored by Alfred Dunhill Ltd. It was for three-man teams of professional golfers, one team representing each country, and was promoted as the "World Team Championsh ...

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on b ...

References

External links

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Article from Sports Illustrated
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rutledge, Jim Canadian male golfers Asian Tour golfers European Tour golfers PGA Tour golfers PGA Tour Champions golfers Korn Ferry Tour graduates Golfing people from British Columbia 1959 births Living people