A little more info: the markup that WordPress is emitting is illegal. “/P” is not allowed between “TABLE” and “TBODY”, and “BR /” is not allowed between “TR” and “TD”.
What happens as a result is that the implied P and the BRs get tidied up by the web browsers’ HTML parsers, and placed before the table for rendering purposes. Behold, lots and lots of blank vertical space, all because WP is emitting illegal tags for no demonstrable reason.
Is there really no way to tell WordPress that no, really, you know what you’re doing and WP should not interfere with the markup you’re writing?
