THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Make no mistake, this was all about the money

Forget the word “merger.”

This was a sale.

Or a sellout.

Either way, Saudi Arabia has purchased professional golf.

All of it.

We just witnessed a stunning betrayal, after the PGA Tour carried on for two years about the evil Saudis and punished players who took massive amounts of money to join the LIV Tour.

Those players who remained loyal to the Tour woke up this week to discover they’d been abandoned by the people to whom they’d kept their allegiance.

The PGA Tour and the European Tour painted their “arrangement” with the Saudis as a coming-together of the world’s best golfers.

In reality, it was the most astounding piece of sportswashing ever seen.

Ironically, former President Donald Trump — close friend of the Saudis and a man who knows about cold-blooded business deals — called this shot almost a year ago.

“All of those golfers that remain ‘loyal’ to the very disloyal PGA,” Trump wrote in an online post last July, “will pay a big price when the inevitable merger with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big ‘thank you’ from PGA officials.”

INDEED, players from the PGA Tour howled that they’d been undercut, and two-time major winner Colin Morikawa called Tuesday “the longest day in golf.”

Morikawa and many other PGA Tour players found out about the sale to the Saudis on Twitter — which made an ugly deal feel even worse.

And make no mistake …

The Saudis now own the whole thing.

In return for their never-ending supply of cash, they will control the finances and future of the combined tours.

According to the New York Times, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who runs Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, will become the chairman of the combined tour — while PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan gets the title of chief executive.

As part of the deal, the Saudi investment fund will have the right of first refusal for future investments in the tour, allowing the PIF to expand its stake.

Just as you’d expect, there was blowback to this capitulation beyond that of the PGA Tour players — many of whom missed out on the staggering money the LIV Tour handed over in the past two years.

Here’s ESPN host Scott Van Pelt …

“So, you preach loyalty to a tour and convince guys not to take eight- and nine-figure deals based, in part, on that loyalty and, in part, on the source of the money.

“Then those guys find out on Twitter that YOU took the very same money?”

Frankly, it’s hard to grasp the enormity of this transaction, which was done quietly by Monahan, two of his board members, and a Saudi delegation.

Even now, PGA Tour players and officials, along with plenty of major figures in free world countries (who have heavily criticized the Saudi regime) are asking how long this under-the-table surrender had been planned.

Monahan certainly didn’t consult his players.

He left Tour loyalists like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy somewhere out on a limb, and allowed LIV star Brooks Koepka (who is unpleasant at the best of times) a chance to publicly mock media members who had criticized the LIV Tour.

THIS IS clearly about money.

OK, to be more accurate, it’s entirely about money.

If you paint Monahan in the best possible light and try to ignore the sneaky way this deal was done, you could argue that PGA Tour honchos realized there was no way they could compete with the PIF’s endless resources.

Since the Saudis never cared about running their golf enterprise as a profitable business, the PGA Tour might be seen as fighting a losing battle over the long haul — and just like those players who defected for giant paydays, the Tour took the cash while the best deal was still on the table.

Bottom line …

Most golf fans really don’t care what rich people are running big-name tournaments.

Golf nuts just want to see the game played by its most gifted practitioners.

That’s what makes this such a win for the Saudis, who are betting that the world — or at least the golf world — will forget its human rights record, or the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

They could be correct.

In part.

I mean, will anybody boycott Tour events?

Right.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”