I shoot in a couple of Gallery Pistol leagues. Leaving out the high-end, and expensive, imports (Pardini, Walther GSP & SSP, Hammerli, and a few others), what you'll see on the line are Rugers and Smith 41s. Every now and again somebody will show up with a Smith Mod 22 or Buckmark or something similar, but they are rarely, in my experience, serious competitors. I think that's as good an indicator as any of what would be considered "good" target pistols.
If you can afford it, my advice would be to find a gently used Model 41 and immediately get some good target grips that fit your hand - I like Rinks, but there are others. That should set you back a bit over $1K or so. If you don't want to spend that much, then go with the Ruger. There are matches won every day in our leagues by guys shooting Rugers.
I shot a 41 for years and eventually replaced it with a GSP, which I dearly love, but it has no more usable accuracy than the 41, just a bit more dependability. The 41s can be fussy about ammo and need to be kept clean to run well - most of the alibis we get are guys shooting 41s that haven't been cleaned in a while. (By comparison, I clean my Walther about once a year, which means once every several thousand rounds, and I've never had a failure to fire either in practice or in competition). But if you keep up with the maintenance on the 41, it's as competitive as anything out there and a very good gun for the money.