I have had over 10 Gamemasters in Dungeons Dragons Pen and Paper sessions. None of them have told me in any Dnd session that humans are taller then Elves. You can think whatever you want and I do not care if you think Elves are clearly shorter then humans.
Whether you played with ten DMs, one-hundred DMs or one-thousand DMs is immaterial; they probably read the official racial stats and ignored them or - more likely - they skipped them entirely...and that's okay. If you - personally - want to play your D&D elves as statuesque Nordic sylvan supermodels, go right ahead. All I did was point to the canon/core figures of a particular tabletop roleplaying game. Should you wish to assert the contrary until you're blue in the face, you're welcome to do so as well. Odds are, the printed books and PDFs will remain unchanged at the end of the day.
Anyhow, I'll not feed into the Tolkien sermon any further, but I will end my involvement by pointing out a few facts.
Tolkien's elves are equally as tall if not taller than Men; Dungeon & Dragons' elves are usually shorter than humans.
Tolkien's elves are innately capable of performing superheroic feats of agility; Dungeon & Dragons' elves are clearly more agile compared to an average human, but they require much experience (i.e., character levels) in a relevant class (such as Monk, Ranger, Rogue/Thief, et cetera) before they can hope to compete with their distant Middle-Earth cousins.
Tolkien's elves worship specific gods; Dungeon & Dragons' elves worship different gods.
Tolkien's elves represent a handful of "mundane" subspecies; Dungeon & Dragons' elves contain a wider array of subspecies...a few of which are radically different (e.g., the Drow, the Avariel and the Aquatic Elves).
Roughly forty-five years later, that initial seed of inspiration which was planted during D&D's creation has clearly grown into its own unique specimen. Carry on.
