Less than 15 minutes – that’s how long it took for every single ticket for this weekend’s Davis Cup tie in Glasgow to sell out.

For each of the next three days, 7000 tennis fans will watch Great Briain and Australia battle it out to the reach the final. With the vast majority of those supporters being British fans and the home team holding at least a 50-50 chance of progressing to the final for the first time in 37 years, it is going to be something special.

The Davis Cup is a sporting oddity. It has never quite found a place in the tennis calendar in which it is entirely comfortable and the intermittent reluctance from the top players to fully engage with the event has not helped its cause.

There is an unmistakable feeling that many of the top players prioritise performing well at the grand slams ahead of turning out for their country; yet, a Davis Cup victory remains something that all of the top players want on their CV. The Davis Cup has a uniqueness about it that ensures it retains its appeal despite the matches almost never taking place at congruous times of the season and the potential change of surfaces making it not only inconvenient for the players but often an outright hindrance to their tour schedule.

For all that, the Davis Cup gives tennis fans something that no other event in the calendar can: a chance to be wholly and comprehensively patriotic.

Tennis, for 99 per cent of the year, is something of an anomaly in the world of sport in that it transcends nationalism. Yes, the British players are favoured by the crowds at Wimbledon and this is mirrored at all the grand slams for home players. But when you consider that elite sport is, by and large, an entity built on tribalism and patriotism, tennis has remarkably little of it.

The lack of patriotism in tennis is a strange phenomenon; in almost every other sport in the world, spectators would cheer on a trained chimp if it was wearing their own nation’s colours; in tennis, fans seem almost completely oblivious to national identity. Spectators are just as, if not more likely, to pick their favourite players based on personality or style of play than they are to pick them on nationality. No player draws more support away from home than Roger Federer but all of the top players have huge followings wherever and whoever they play.

Indeed, there is so little jingoism within tennis that when Andy Murray took on Federer in the 2012 Wimbledon final – bearing in mind that no Briton had won the men's singles at the All England club for 76 years – the crowd was split 50-50 between Murray and his Swiss foe.

The bias towards Federer has been even more pronounced at the season-ending World Tour Finals in London, with Murray supporters well and truly drowned out by the Alpine roar. Murray’s support has gradually increased since then but that appears to be due to a softening of attitude from the English portion of the tennis-supporting public towards Murray rather than any increase in British patriotism. However, the Scot is still not certain in his own mind when he takes to Centre Court that he will be the crowd favourite by any significant margin.

Just prior to his Wimbledon semi-final against Federer this summer Murray admitted that while he hoped that the crowd would back him, he suspected that a large proportion would be cheering for his opponent. “I hope I get good support,” he said. “But Roger's extremely popular everywhere he goes, so it might not be as partisan a crowd as some matches that I play here.”

Equally, the backing received by the American tennis players at the US Open has not exactly been overwhelming; it took Serena Williams to be going for the calendar Grand Slam for her to receive unfettered support.

The Davis Cup is the one event in tennis in which unyielding patriotism is displayed. It is likely that only a tiny minority of the fans inside the Emirates Arena this weekend will be Dom Inglot or Dan Evans disciples, yet when of the Englishmen take to the court over the course of this tie they will be met with screams and cheers that would not sound out of place at a Justin Bieber concert.

And this is why it is important that the Davis Cup remains a robust and relevant competition within the tennis calendar. There are arguments regarding whether it should be biennial rather than annual and if the format should be altered to avoid each round taking place in the direct aftermath of major tournaments. But whatever the future of the Davis Cup may be, everything should be done to maintain its place in the tennis world because it is the one event that has something different from all the others. That alone makes it special. The next three days in Glasgow will prove just how special it is.