A fighter approach to my understanding and what we do is burn in straight and level over the runway about 100ft off the deck, pitch up to break and turn it into a 180 deg turn to put you on downwind.
Then as your pass the end of the intended touch down point turn base then curve into finals and touch almost as your wings go level to bring you onto runway heading.
The amount of time you spend on finals gliding to the runway is about 2-5 seconds on a good turn in and about 10 on a long one.
I can do a video if you want an example?
Pman
edit, found one I did a while back for a demo