Sure, Tiger Woods already has a Minnesota connection -- having played here twice in the PGA Championship at Hazeltine and finishing as the runner-up both times (in 2002 and 2009). But now he has a connection to our great state -- allegedly -- that truly is bizarre.

Per an ESPN.com story on Tiger's former swing coach Hank Haney and his new book coming out (our bold)

The book goes on sale March 27 -- one week before the Masters -- and it already has been getting plenty of attention because of a few sections that raise questions about how Woods injured his leg.

Haney cites Corey Carroll, one of Woods' closest friends at Isleworth, as saying Woods injured his right Achilles tendon doing Olympic-style weightlifting as he returned from reconstructive knee surgery in December 2008.

Haney also tells of a woman who approached him during an outing in Minnesota last year. Her husband was a Navy SEAL in California and told her Woods came in for training in 2007 at a Kill House -- an urban-warfare simulator -- and "got kicked pretty hard in the leg, and I think he hurt his knee pretty bad."

Haney said that matched a story from Carroll, who said Woods revealed to him the complete tear of his left knee ligaments really happened in a Kill House when he had lost his balance and been kicked in the knee.

"My immediate thought upon hearing Corey's account, which so closely paralleled that of the woman in Minneapolis, was that it was true," Haney writes. "And if so, it meant that if Tiger never catches Jack Nicklaus, it will very likely have as much to do with the time and physical capacity he lost as a result of his bizarre Navy SEALs adventure as anything else."

So a woman in Minneapolis corroborated a story about Woods being injured during Navy SEAL training in California? Yeah, that sounds about right.