Desmond Muirhead was a master designer of ski resorts. He found a lot in common with both golf courses and downhill ski slopes — "Both take a lot of engineering...and routing," he told me.
Which reminds me, our office once got involved in a planning effort for a (now) famous ski resort that was considering a golf course. Our solution: Retrofitted lifts that would haul an EZ-GO cart up the mountain so all the holes played downhill. No joke. No, we did not get the job.