| 1957 | A seed (for his own club) is planted on news that Jack Burke and Jimmy Demaret founded The Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas |
| 1964 | The Open Championship at the Old Course in St. Andrews was to be his first major championship. Tony ‘Champagne’ Lema was the champion golfer that year only to die in a plane crash two years later. |
| c.1965 | Pat, with typewriter in toe, moved to Dublin as a dedicated free-lance golf writer mainly contributing to the Evening Herald, his first article earning him the princely sum of three guineas. South African golf was another of the publications he put pen to paper for, but contributed to articles in eighteen countries as a freelance golf writer. |
| 1968 | Pat became staff reporter at the Evening Herald and even then sought out course design work until he subsequently left in 1970 before launching his own golf magazine. |
| 1969 | Engaged by Castlecomer Golf Club to redesign their nine-hole parkland course for a nominal fee. Pat would return again in 2002 to complete the design of an eighteen-hole course as the club that took a chance on a mere novice had launched his career in course design. The fifth hole was named in his honour. Pat would later partner up with Henry Cotton to design golf courses. |
| 1972 | Launch of a new golf magazine – The Golfer’s Companion – where he was writer, publisher and photographer (his Brownie was an inseparable companion). The magazine had its final publication in 2000. |
| 1970s | One of the first Irish journalists to attend the US Masters. |
| 1975 | Parcel of land in the southern part of his home county of Sligo (Gortsheen) was his first venture. The flood plains of Sligo soon appeared as the Owenmore river burst its bank which created an unintended water feature. |
| | Lough Rynn Castle County Leitrim became the next location honed in on but a retreat at the eleventh hour left this as just a flickering ember. |
| 1986 | The core site for The European Club comes on the market only two years after it had been earmarked as a potential site. Dunes encroached inland for half-a-mile reaching a height of eighty feet and a depth of forty. Further land banks are acquired subsequently. |
| 1987 | The formation of The European Club and Tom Craddock joined the design team and the legendary Sir Henry Cotton died this year. |
| 1990 | Messrs. Ruddy & Craddock design the Killeen Golf Club. |
| 1992 | Open for play on 26 December 1992 after naming it The European Club and patenting the logo design (the Dolmen supporting a golf ball) are fed by guile, experience and serendipity in equal measure. The cost to play was £10 (a tenner) at the gate where the Nissan Bluebird was the only shelter is the clubhouse-less playground. There was no shortage of willing takers, even though word of mouth was the PR strategy, a personalised Field of Dreams. It opened on a three-day week basis and for seven days from 1 May 1993. |
| 1992 | Messrs. Ruddy & Craddock design the St. Margaret’s Golf Club. |
| 1993 | Ballymascanlon Golf Club set in the Cooley peninsula was an eighteen-hole parkland course designed by Ruddy & Craddock. |
| 1993 | May 1993 saw Messrs. Ruddy & Craddock’s course design -work commence on a new championship course at Ballyliffin. The Glashedy Links would become a reality by August 1995. |
| 1994 | Druids Glen was designed by Messrs. Ruddy & Craddock. |
| 1995 | Messrs. Ruddy & Craddock design the nine-hole Connemara Isles Golf Club, a parkland course. Ruddy says, presumably for the pure grit and determination to get across the line – “it came from zero, and grew like a weed out of nothing.” – but probably best not to dwell on the literal meaning but rather on the sentiment. |
| 1998 | The legendary golfer and gentleman, the larger than life Tom Craddock, a favourite son of Malahide Golf Club, and the other half of the Ruddy / Craddock partnership passed away. |
| 1998 | Ballinlough Castle |
| 1999 | Membership to The European Club closed. |
| 1999 | Montreal Island where Pat designed two new courses. |
| 2000 | Involved in redesign of the Portsalon Golf Club |
| 2002 | Distinguished Services award from the Irish Golf Writers’ Association |
| 2003 | June 2003 saw the opening of the Ruddy designed Sandy Hills Links at Rosapenna. |
| 2003 | Druids Heath was designed by Pat Ruddy. |
| 1997.. | Remodelling of the Hackett designed Donegal Golf Club was done under the watchful eye of Pat Ruddy. |
| – | Pat Ruddy also tweaked the holes at the Enniscorthy Golf Club. |
| – | Rosses Point, the renowned Harry Colt design, has sought his services to carry out improvements something which he took immense pride in. His reverence for the place extended to a flippant remark of wishing to be buried upright facing down the tenth fairway towards Benbulben. |
| – | Organised an All-Ireland Ludo championship at the CIE Club in Marlborough Street. |
| – | A member of the Irish, British and American Golf-Writers’ Associations. |
| 2016 | Sponsored the Ruddy Cup for Irish PGA registered trainee professionals |