It’s a fickle old game. One week you can be flying high, the next you’re feeling as low as Icarus when he noticed the wax melting.

Shane Lowry knows all about golf’s fluctuating fortunes. “When you do have success, you just have to try to enjoy it because you can quickly find yourself being brought down to earth with a bang,” said the 29-year-old Irishman. “Golf gives you nothing.”

Pressure and expectation are par for the course in the cut-and-thrust of top level competition and nowhere is that cranked up more than in the Major championship arena. This week Lowry, and the rest of those on the global bandwagon, pitch up in Troon for the Open Championship.

Lowry is there already. A missed cut in the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart on Friday ensured an early trip down the road for the world No 26. He’s never been to Troon although he has tasted success in this neck of the woods having been part of the Irish side who won the European Amateur Team Championship at nearby Western Gailes in 2007. Departing prematurely from an event is always a sore one to take but not half as painful to stomach as missing out on a maiden Major title.

Leading last month’s US Open by four shots heading into the final round at Oakmont, Lowry’s title ambitions unravelled on the back nine with a succession of damaging bogeys. He wasn’t helped either by the USGA’s indecisive waffling about a penalty stroke that would or would not be given to eventual champion Dustin Johnson which meant the confused front-runners played their final few holes unsure of what score Johnson was actually on.

For Lowry, that whole affair was something of a video nasty. But he has sat down and pored over it, even if it was hands over the eyes stuff.

“I must have played that final round over in my head about 100 times and I eventually got round to watching a highlights package of it,” said Lowry. “I just wanted to watch it and I was as disappointed as I had been on the Sunday of the actual event. People think I’m this happy-go-lucky bloke because I seem to be smiling a lot but something like that is always going to hurt. I spoke to Darren (Clarke) the day after the US Open and he was the one who said to me you should go back and look at the highlights to see if you can take anything from it.”

Other pearls of slap-on-the-back wisdom were provided by Jack Nicklaus. Despite racking up a formidable haul of 18 Majors during a glory-laden career, the Golden Bear also endured his fair share of disappointments and was runner-up in a further 19.

"I was doing something with Jack just after the US Open and he said, 'listen, it's your own mistake if you don't learn from it',” said Lowry. “I thought that was a good way to put it."

They say that to fully appreciate the sweet you have to taste the sour. Then again. “People now suggest that because I’ve lost a Major I can win one but why couldn’t I have just gone out and won that one?” he said. “That was a lot of the talk after the US Open. But then Keegan Bradley or Jason Dufner or Danny Willett won Majors in their first time of being in contention. They didn’t have to lose one before they won one.”

The aforementioned Johnson will amble into Ayrshire this week as the hottest golfer on the planet. He followed up that US Open win with another success in last weekend’s WGC Bridgestone Invitational, a title Lowry had captured the year before.

Johnson’s major mishaps were bountiful but he finally got the monkey of his back at Oakmont and the 32-year-old, who shared second in the 2011 Open at St George’s and was leading after 36-holes at St Andrews last year, is being tipped by many to conquer again at Royal Troon.

Lowry’s rise to prominence in recent years means he too has hefty expectations, both from himself and from those outside.

“I have to play down the expectation a little bit because there’s a lot of expectation from myself and a lot of other people,” he said. “I just have to be cautious about that. I’m fairly optimistic going to Troon. I wouldn’t be going if I didn’t think I could win and I say that about every tournament. I know that if I can get myself in that position again - and hopefully that will be next Sunday - then I have the tools to do the business.”

For Lowry, Johnson, Jason Day, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and the rest of the world’s elite, it’s nearly time to get down to business.