Having worked my career in clay based soils of Illinois and Texas, I take clay soils as a given and prefer topography! Of my 50 courses, only a nine holer in Louisana, Wild Wing in MB, and the Quarry in MN had sandy soils in part or in full. I'm working on a new one where its a sandy silt, which drains fast, but not so reliably that low areas don't need catch basins. Even at the Quarry, which was an old sand quarry, we had to move the best sand around to provide the best fw, because it did have small rocks in it, too large for fw mowers to handle.
With modern agronomy, its not terribly difficult to overcome those soil problems, even if not ideal. And yes, if you want to do Ross style (real or imagined, see my other thread!) chipping areas, the low spots need catch basins in clay.
As to topography, I would say the first thing I like to avoid is floodplain sites. Then really steep hills with no flat areas to work around. Gently rolling with a few dramatic rises works fine in most cases. Ideal is the Sand Hills type topo with lots of natural valleys.