Dealing with high expectations is part and parcel of the professional golfer's lot and Leona Maguire will tee off her seventh full season as a professional in this week's Tournament of Champions looking to manage not only those of her admirers but also her own.

When she turned professional aged 23 years, 6 months and 9 days in Atlantic City in 2018, the five-foot-six-inch Ballyconnell battler made no secret of her lofty ambition.

"I will take it one event at a time and one shot at a time but the dream is to be the best player in the world," she said in the vast Presidential Ballroom at the Stockton Seaview Hotel & Golf Resort that week. "I got to No 1 in the amateur rankings so there is no reason why I can't have the same goal. It might take a little bit longer, but that's the challenge."

Now 30, Maguire reached a career-high of 10th in the world shortly after claiming her second LPGA win in 2023. She's now 54th after a below-average 2024 when she "only" won once and was inexplicably snubbed by Suzann Pettersen in three of the four team sessions at the Solheim Cup.

It was a blow to her pride that she salved with a 4&3 demolition of Ally Ewing in the singles, reminding her detractors  on an X post that "form is temporary, class is permanent."

Yes, she's largely failed so far to live up to her massive potential in the majors, notching just three top 10s in the 24 she's played since turning professional, painfully shooting 74 to slip to 11th in the 2023 KPMG Women's PGA when she had a one-shot lead after 54 holes.

But dealing with high expectations is par for the course when you turn professional with 135 weeks as world amateur number one under your belt, taking the record from the prodigy that was Lydia Ko.

Ko, after all, became the youngest player to win an LPGA event at age 15, the youngest of either gender to reach world number one as a professional at age 17, and the youngest woman to win a major at 18.

But even the New Zealander, still just 27, has suffered her share of reverses, going eight years without a major win before she captured the AIG Women's Open last year.

That five players who either preceded or followed Maguire as world amateur number one have won majors — Minjee Lee (two), Brooke Henderson (two), Celine Boutier (one), Jennifer Kupcho (one) and Lilia Vu (two)— only adds to the pressure on Maguire's shoulders

But as the Cavan woman said when assessing an "okay" 2024 season that brought missed cuts in three  of the five majors and little in the way of success bar her runner-up finish to an inspired world number one Nelly Korda in the T-Mobile Match Play and that historic first Irish win on the LET in London in July,  "if this year is the worst it gets, I don't really have much to complain about."

Parting company with caddie Dermot Byrne mid-season was a big blow but having admitted she worked hard on the psychological part of the game from that point on, it's reasonable to assume that the mental game will be key to meeting, not only the high expectations of her supporters, but her own.

It speaks volumes about her thinking that she took to social media to laud Demi Moore's inspirational speech after she won her first major acting award at the Golden Globes at the age of 62.

"In those moments when we don't think we're smart enough or pretty enough or skinny enough or successful enough or basically just not enough, I had a woman say to me, 'Just know you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’"