Novak Djokovic vs. Rafael Nadal: What US Open Win Would Mean for Both Stars

The epic clash of the titans that fans have waited two weeks for has finally arrived. On Monday afternoon, top-ranked Novak Djokovic will face off against second-seeded Rafael Nadal in the 2013 U.S. Open final, a match that will come with so many connotations that they're hard to count.

Nadal and Djokovic have a long, storied history of beating up on one another. Dating back to 2006, the men have met 36 times, with Nadal's 21 triumphs giving him the upper hand. Djokovic, however, holds the hard-court advantage with 11 wins in 17 tries.

You can see why folks are having trouble picking a winner. 

In 2013, the men have met three times. In the first matchup, at the Monte Carlo tuneup for the French Open, Djokovic took advantage of a still-healing Nadal to get a straight-sets win. Nadal has taken the next two, including a five-set thriller at Roland Garros. It was Nadal's seventh victory in 10 chances against the Serb in Grand Slams, though Djokovic has won each of the past three not held on clay.

Still see why it's so hard picking a winner? 

OK.

Good.

Because I'm not going to do that.

Instead, let's examine what a win would mean for both players. Nadal and Djokovic are, for my dollar, unquestionably the two best players in the world. A victory carries connotations both in the moment and from a historical perspective for both men, and there may be no more captivating sporting event in the world than watching two elite players battle for their legacies. (Except football. Because, football.)

With that in mind, let's take a quick look at what a 2013 U.S. Open win would mean for Nadal and Djokovic.

Rafael Nadal: Cementing of Career Season, All-Time Great Comeback

I can't really say which of these two narratives spins better. So let's do as I did on my high school calculus homework and cheat a little bit. 

With a win Monday, Nadal would all but sew up 2013 being the finest year of his career. The 27-year-old Spaniard already has nine titles on tour this season, won his eighth French Open in the past nine years and holds a 59-3 record.

Yes, you read that right. Three. Losses. The. Entire. Season. 

Nadal's utter evisceration of the tennis world will get pushed to an entirely different level if he beats Djokovic. It's hard to say where the legacy question ends and begins, but it would be an awfully interesting conversation about where his 2013 ranks all-time with a win.

I'm not even sure what to make of it. Is it on par with Roger Federer's 2004 and 2005 run or Djokovic's 2011 rampage? Or do we knock Nadal's accomplishment down a tier because he missed the Australian Open and bowed out in the first round at Wimbledon? 

The answer is probably door No. 2; it's just too hard justifying placing him in that conversation when he was a non-factor at two Grand Slams. Yet there's no question that Nadal is already pushing his own 2010 campaign in his career hierarchy, and a win against Djokovic would probably tip the scales.

That he's even at this point may be the most impressive thing of all. At last year's U.S. Open, the only conversation involving Rafael Nadal surrounded whether he'd ever play again. Nadal's balky knees had again reared their ugly head, shutting down his season after a second-round loss at Wimbledon.

The recurrence of his now-chronic knee problems had some calling for his early retirement. Others just wondered whether he even still belonged in the conversation with Djokovic, Federer (yikes) and Andy Murray. In all, Nadal missed a full seven months of action, during a time where he fell out of the top five for the first time since 2005.

Even if you expected Nadal to come back and return to that conversation, no one expected this world-beating excellence. From a comeback perspective, his 2013 is on par with anything we've ever seen in the sport. It's his 2012 Peyton Manning campaign.

The folklore of that alone is enough to carry some legacy talks. But with a win Monday, we may be witnessing tennis history from a couple different perspectives.

Novak Djokovic: Peace of Mind

If you listen to those newfangled things called the world tennis rankings, you'd probably be of the belief that Djokovic is the best player in the world.

He not only holds top billing, but does so by more than 900 points over Nadal and nearly 4,000 over Murray. You need roughly 31.5 years of advanced schooling to figure out what that means; suffice it to say, though, Djokovic is pretty good.

But we just spent paragraphs chipping away at what the rankings supposedly tell us. There is no comprehensible way anyone could justify calling Djokovic the world's best player at the moment. Nadal has been too good, too dominant for any other player to even sit at the big boys' table with him. So take that, Dr. Algorithm. 

The conversation, at least for some, changes a bit if Djokovic wins the U.S. Open. That triumph would give him two Grand Slam titles on the season, the only player with multiple in 2013. Djokovic is also the only player to make three Slam finals this year. While it's fair to wonder what would have happened if Nadal would have been healthy at the Aussie Open, it's also fair to wonder how Lost would be remembered with a better ending. You can't know; you're better off working in reality. 

The reality is that, generally speaking, we judge a season based on the Grand Slams. No one is going back and looking up the historical connotations of a Western & Southern Open win, regardless of how fair or unfair that is. When those crazy kids with their fancy flying cars look back 50 years from now, the first name that pops out will be whoever wins this match.

That would do a whole lot for justifying that strange formula, no? And for a man who has held a trophy just once since February, it'd be a good indicator that his career doesn't need to start gathering animals by the two.

Djokovic could also use another Slam in the always-tricky historical perspective. The 26-year-old Serb has six career titles, tying him with Boris Becker and placing him one behind John McEnroe on the all-time list. 

Four of those have been at the Australian Open. The other two were split up in his transcendent 2011, with titles at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows. Dominance in one tournament doesn't strip a career's worth of accomplishments away—Nadal "only" has four slams outside Roland Garros—but it also helps to diversify your portfolio a little bit.

Djokovic is nowhere near the Federer, Nadal, Pete Sampras, etc. conversation yet. I'm sure he hopes to get there. Perhaps a win against his fiercest rival is what it will take to finally dawn the Age of Djokovic and start that process.

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