Can Novak Djokovic usurp the No. 1 ranking from Rafael Nadal during this year's clay season?

World No. 1 Rafael Nadal and World No. 2 Novak Djokovic are all set to wage a titanic battle for supremacy on European clay

Nearly five months on, the men’s tennis calendar has been nothing short of topsy-turvy. Except for the top two ranking spots, every other place in the top 10 has witnessed a bit of shuffling. But in the clay season, the changes in rankings could produce a whole different kind of excitement, with a battle between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic for the all-important No. 1 spot being potentially on the cards.

It was Stanislas Wawrinka’s win at the Australian Open that threw open the gates of alterations in the top 10 rankings, including setting up a potential change in the top-two line-up as well, as the season progressed into the American hardcourt season.

At the start of the year, Nadal had a head-start over his rival by over 4,000 points, a gap that looked set to widen even more thanks to Djokovic’s erratic start to the year. But the expected trajectory veered completely off-course, thanks to the Spaniard’s near-insipid performance at Indian Wells where he failed to defend his title going out in the third round to Alexandr Dolgopolov. Co-incidentally, Indian Wells also saw the resurgence of the Serb who wasted no opportunity to reclaim the title, in the process also successfully avenging his Dubai loss to Roger Federer.

Djokovic further solidified his revival at Miami, completing his second Indian Wells-Miami double, this time defeating the Spaniard in straight sets – 6-3, 6-3 – thus narrowing the points’ difference between him and Rafa to about 2,000 points. That conveniently piles up a lot of pressure on the Spaniard’s back in the clay season, where he has as many as 5,100 points to defend in Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome and the French Open.

Though Djokovic himself isn’t exempt from defending headaches – he is the defending champion at the ongoing Monte Carlo Masters – his early exits in Rome and Madrid mean that he has only 1,910 points to defend, which is over 3,000 points less than what Rafa has to guard. There’s no denying that it is Rafa who faces more heat over the next couple of months despite being on course to add more milestones to his already unprecedented claycourt records.

Theoretically, if Djokovic wins all the three upcoming Masters 1000 tournaments on clay, he will regain the No. 1 ranking from Nadal before the French Open irrespective of the Spaniard’s results. Alternatively, if Djokovic wins two Masters and reaches the final of the third, he will get to No. 1 if Nadal fails to make the semifinal at even a single tournament out of Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome and Barcelona. Both those scenarios are highly unlikely, but if Djokovic manages to put in a couple of strong showings over the next two months, a change at the top is possible by the time the French Open and Wimbledon roll around.

The tussle between these two guys promises to make for riveting stuff, with over 5,000 points separating them from the remaining two of the top four quartet. But the comparatively sedate-looking contest between third seed Wawrinka and fourth seed Roger Federer is no less intriguing.

Although Wawrinka’s start to 2014 was brilliant, with wins at the Chennai Open and the Australian Open, it is his compatriot who has been more consistent. Of the five ATP tournaments Federer has played so far, he’s reached the finals of three of them – Brisbane, Dubai (which he won) and Indian Wells – and made it to the semi-finals of the Australian Open and the quarter-finals at Miami. Federer’s consistency coupled with Wawrinka’s post-Melbourne struggles have resulted in just a 405-point gap between them. Since they will both be participating at Monte Carlo this year, it is possible that Federer could pip Wawrinka for the number three ranking slot as early as next week itself.

The top four ranked players can only get shuffled within themselves unlike the remainder of the six players making up the top 10 bracket. It is amongst some of these players that the most pronounced changes seem likely to happen during the clay season.

In 2013, David Ferrer made it to the final of Miami, eventually losing to Andy Murray. Both Ferrer and Murray had nondescript tournaments at Miami this year, with the former being troubled by injuries which forced him to withdraw from Indian Wells. For the first time in years, Ferrer has been quite muted in his performances so far this season, which has resulted in a steep fall in his ranking – from third to sixth. If Ferrer isn’t able to regroup enough to do well during the clay season, specifically at the French Open, a further plunge in his ranking can very well be expected.

The trajectory of Murray’s performances this year doesn’t bode well either. His fitness was not at its optimal level at the start of the year, and then came the unexpected parting from his mentor Ivan Lendl at a very crucial juncture.

In Murray’s favour though, his relatively mediocre performances on clay in 2013 reduce the pressure on him, particularly since he had opted out of the French Open last year. But the clay season is important for Murray from another angle: if he doesn’t build up sufficient momentum during the next two months, he will enter the grasscourt swing – where he’s defending a ton of points thanks to his wins at Queen’s and Wimbledon last year – low on confidence and short of form.

Tomas Berdych meanwhile stands on the fringes of the top four and has already proclaimed that he has been motivated by Wawrinka’s win at Australia. The Czech is always a looming threat in all tournaments that he contests and his game is quite effective on clay – his easy power can put even the best good claycourters on the back-foot. Moreover, as between Wawrinka and Federer, only a handful of points separate Berdych from Federer, which makes the Czech’s results this year all the more poignant. That said, Berdych’s pressing injury concerns that kept him away from playing in the Davis Cup tie against Japan could also be a factor.

Juan Martin del Potro, who’s still recuperating from a wrist surgery that saw him pull out of his matches in Indian Wells and Miami, is sure to be hit with a drop in his rankings despite the fact that he didn’t have an outstanding claycourt season last year. With the Argentine likely to miss the rest of the season and the grasscourt and hardcourt swings – where he has plenty of points to defend – to follow clay, it is possible that he will be saddled with a sub-100 ranking by the time he makes his comeback.

All of these possibilities of realignments in rankings, however, seem secondary to the Nadal-Djokovic scuffle at the top. Because of the vast gap in points between these two players and the rest of the field, it’s almost as if Rafa and Djokovic are on a completely different tennis plane where other players, while in existence, don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Will the battle gather even more intensity as Djokovic strives to displace the emperor on the throne? Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Rome, Madrid and Paris will give us the answer.