Australia's Lleyton Hewitt insists his game has improved since the days when he was ranked the world's top player.

Preparing for his home tournament in Adelaide, which starts on Sunday, Hewitt said injuries had deprived him of the consistency that saw him top the world rankings from November 2001 to June 2003.

"I think I'm a better player now than I probably was when I was number one, number two in the world a couple of years ago," he told reporters as he kicked off his preparations for another tilt at his home slam, next month's Australian Open.

"But you have got to produce that week in, week out and obviously with a few niggling injuries that is pretty hard to do."

Hewitt ends 2006 with a world ranking of 20 after a year that saw him secure just one title, at Queen's Club in June.

But with his knee injury cured and after a rigorous fitness regime under the eye of coach Roger Rasheed, he believes he can reclaim his place at the pinnacle.

"I'm pretty confident I have done enough work to be physically one of the best guys out there," said the former U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion.

"I feel like I'm playing as well as a lot of guys in the top 10, if not better than half of them. It's not really a goal to get back into the top 10.

"Obviously I want to be competing into the last weekend of at least the four majors and have a crack at one of them. There's a guy named Roger Federer that is probably going to disagree with that."

Hewitt, whose best performance at Melbourne Park was his final defeat to Marat Safin in 2005, said he would not focus too much on the threat of Federer.

"The game keeps getting better and better, there is no doubt about that and Federer has now taken it to another level.

"You have got to get to the semis and finals pretty much to have a crack at him. I have to try and take care of obviously the lower ranked guys first to get an opportunity at Federer.

"You don't want to be too worried about him.

Hewitt is the fourth highest-ranked player at next week's Adelaide International, the tournament he first won as a 16-year-old in 1988, behind Serb No. 16 Novak Djokovic. The Australian Open starts on Jan 15.