Wimbledon champion Venus Williams will remain seventh in the world rankings despite claiming her fifth title at the All England Club on Saturday.

As defending champion, Williams had a lot of points to defend and would have actually dropped to eighth if she had lost to sister Serena in the final.

Serena lost in the quarter-finals here last year so was guaranteed to climb one place to fifth regardless of the result in the final, which she lost 7-5 6-4 to her elder sister after being a break up in each set.

Despite a shock third-round loss to wild card Zheng Jie, Serbia's Ana Ivanovic retains the world number one spot she achieved after reaching, and eventually winning, the French Open final.

Maria Sharapova's shock second-round loss sees her fall from second to third, swapping places with Jelena Jankovic, who reached the fourth round.

Wimbledon was only the eighth tournament the Williams sisters had played in 2008, and the feeling persists the pair could easily be the top two ranked players in the world again if they were not distracted by their off-court activities.

"I would love that," Venus added.

"The main goal for both of us is to stay healthy. We've both worked really hard this year and I think the results showed here, both in the singles and the doubles (which the sisters won for the third time just hours after the singles final).

"The goal is to stay healthy so that we can play singles and doubles and have a lot of fun with it."

An all-Williams final was a common occurrence when the pair first began to dominate. They contested five of the six grand slam finals between the 2002 French Open and Wimbledon in 2003, but that was the last time until Saturday they had met at such a stage.

It was not a classic by any means, but thankfully for those who dredged up tired conspiracy theories about the result being decided in advance, it was a true contest filled with thunderous groundstrokes and massive serving.

And Venus can now set her sights on moving up from fourth place in the Wimbledon singles hall of fame behind Martina Navratilova (nine), Steffi Graf (seven) and Billie-Jean King (six).

Asked about matching Navratilova, who watched the final on Centre Court, Williams said: "Oh, my God. That would be the ultimate.

"That's not easy. Her career spanned like three decades, so I'm not sure if I have that much time. If I did, I think I would definitely dream of that.

"Tennis is so much different now. Tennis is a big business now, all the tournaments, the players. The pressures are different."