It’s official: The Saudis own golf. Tuesday’s bombshell announcement that the PGA Tour will merge with LIV Golf, Saudi Arabia’s multi-billion-dollar image-restoration project, is nothing less than the surrender of a storied American sports tradition to a regime whose human rights abuses are indisputable. The PGA’s famous green jacket is tainted red.

The PGA, golf’s longtime preeminent professional league, and LIV, created in 2021 from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, have until this week been at each other’s throats in public and in court. LIV sought to overtake the PGA’s prominence by waving bigger money at its stars, “sportswashing” Saudi Arabia’s sorry global image in the process.

Some golfers, like Tiger Woods, did the classy thing and passed on LIV’s offer (reportedly foregoing, in his case, close to a billion dollars). Those who took the bait, like Phil Mickelson, were excoriated as traitors. Among the chief excoriators was PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who last year raised the specter of 9/11 when criticizing the Saudi-owned competitor.

While it’s true most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, arguably a more troubling issue — because it’s more current and more directly implicates the royal family — is the regime’s atrocious human rights record, which includes the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

But what the heck, tee up! As stunned PGA players learned Tuesday with the rest of the world (some reportedly first saw it on Twitter), Monahan’s queasiness about cozying up with a rogue regime has evaporated like morning dew on the fairway. Details of the deal are still emerging, but it apparently ends all pending litigation — and brings plenty of that Saudi money to the table.

“I would ask that any player that has left, or that would ever consider leaving” to join LIV, Monahan told an interviewer during the heat of the conflict last year, “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

It’s fair to ask if the answer to that question is now “yes.”