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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; Venus Williams won the Dubai Championships without dropping a set. (Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Venus Williams is back in the top 30 after winning her first title in 16 months.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The 33-year-old rose to 29th in this week's WTA Tour rankings with a dominant performance at the Dubai Championships, where she beat five top-35 players in straight sets for her first Premier-level title since 2010. The 15-spot jump left Williams as the No. 3 American, behind her sister Serena (No. 1) and Sloane Stephens (No. 18).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In other ranking news:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 Simona Halep moved up two spots, to No. 7, matching Irina Spirlea for the highest ranking by a Romanian woman.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 Halep was part of a top-10 shakeup in which Petra Kvitova fell from sixth to ninth, Jelena Jankovic dropped from seventh to eighth and Angelique Kerber climbed from eighth to sixth. The top five -- Serena, Li Na,\u00A0Agnieszka Radwanska,Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova -- remained unchanged.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 Alize Cornet went from No. 26 to No. 23 after stunning Serena in Dubai to make her first hard-court final.\n\u2022 Japan No. 1 Kurumi Nara cracked the top 50 for the first time (No. 48) after winning the Rio Open, the first Japanese WTA champion in almost five years.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/tennis/beyond-baseline/2014/02/24/wta-rankings-venus-williams>