Saudi Arabia is just a big sand trap full of money.

And it has nothing to do with us.

A few of golf’s up-and-coming names have been caught in the Saudi-backed LIV Golf trap. A few of golf’s former big names have been caught in that trap, too. In fact, the majority of the names caught in that trap have their better days – and their better judgment – and their better images ­– buried deep in that trap.

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And those names no longer have anything to do with us.

This weekend, the top 125 players on the PGA tour are here — right here in Memphis — for the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first stop in the FedExCup Playoffs, the first step to winning professional golf’s biggest prize, a real prize, a career-defining prize. And they come here to compete without a single penny guaranteed, with their skill, not their names, earning their reward.

And it has everything to do with us.

The Memphis Open brought the PGA tour to Memphis in 1958, and the Memphis Open was our first big time professional sports event — not an exhibition — not a college rivalry game — not a minor league game against a major league big brother.

This one counted; the best players in the game came; and they still do. Our own Cary Middlecoff won here. Palmer won here. Nicklaus and Trevino are multiple winners.

But Memphis is Memphis, so a connection has to be made, a reason to care about a golf tournament. It has to be personal.

Okay, fine.

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When he was in town for the tournament, Nicklaus was the houseguest of noted amateur Curtis Person, Sr., and was right behind White Station’s right field, right behind me, shagging balls during baseball practice.

Jack and I were close.

In the early ’60s, my father’s office was in the Emmons Building on Poplar Avenue, right across the railroad and Southern Avenue from the old Colonial Country Club where the tournament was played first.

I’d duck out of White Station Junior High at lunch — with Dad’s blessing ­— cut through the Toddle House lot behind the school, meet Dad and go to the tournament on Thursday and Friday, walking every hole.

It was so tight, you literally bumped into players, heard their colorful comments, and dodged balls. I fell in love with the game there, watching it played at its best, standing next to my father.

The late Vernon Bell — owner of the Knickerbocker Restaurant and the Little Tea Shop and founder of Danver’s with Dan Turley ­— was the man who started the Memphis Open in 1958. His daughter, Sara Bell, was a year behind me at White Station, and his son was the late Chris Bell of Big Star.

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Sara Bell owns Mortimer’s, and there’s a side room dedicated to portraits of tournament winners, and a side room dedicated to her brother Chris.

Personal.

At the new Colonial Country Club in the early ’70s, a brand-new pro — my age — took some time with me during the pro-am, showing me how to putt. His name was Tom Watson. I followed him for the rest of his career.

In 1977, I saw Gerald Ford make a hole-in-one in the pro-am, and two days later, I followed Al Geiberger for his last 10 holes when he set the PGA record with the first 59.

And, over a whole lot of years and any number of glasses, I’ve heard, oh, a million stories from FedEx St. Jude Championship general chair Jack Sammons. All of them were funny. Several were true.

Personal.

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Even though Tiger Woods has never played here, he’s been here. Early in his career, he accepted the invitation of Chuck Hudson, then the pro at Pine Hill, to come and conduct golf clinics for inner city kids at the public course.

Tiger was reportedly guaranteed between $700 million and $800 million to join the Saudi’s LIV Golf. He turned that invitation down.

This week, there’s definitely a bag of money to be won here, but the winner won’t feel like he to wash it before he touches it. He won’t have to come up with some tortured rationalization for competing. He won’t have to ignore the sponsorship of one of the world’s most repressive, oppressive, and despotic regimes in our time ­— or any time.

This tournament — our tournament — is sponsored by our own FedEx. The beneficiaries other than the players, other than our city’s image, are the children of St. Jude.

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The beneficiaries of LIV Golf are bought pawns and a nation that literally carves its critics into pieces and carries them away in suitcases — a nation whose citizens planned and executed 9/11 — a nation that is homophobic, misogynist, racist, radical, and murderous.

If there weren’t oil under all that sand, the world wouldn’t give a camel’s hump about Saudi Arabia.

And you shouldn’t either. LIV Golf has nothing to do with you.

It’s completely and clearly out of bounds.

I’m a Memphian, and the FedEx St. Jude Championship is all ours. Be proud.