Why is table-level locking better than row-level locking for large tables?

Question

According to the MySQL manual:

For large tables, table locking is often better than row locking,

Why is this? I would presume

Answer 1

Table locking enables many sessions to read from a table at the same time

To achieve a very high lock speed, MySQL uses table locking

"I would presume that row-level locking is better because" [you lock less data].

First "better" is poorly defined in this page. It appears that better means "faster".

Row-level locking cannot (in general) be faster because of contention for locks. Locking each row of a large result set means the very real possibility of a conflict with another large result set query and a rollback.