Whip round touched one American meeting South Pacific islanders (9)
I believe the answer is:
tahitians
'islanders' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'whip round touched one american meeting south pacific' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'one' could be 'an' (an apple is one apple) and 'an' is found within the answer.
'american' could be 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names) and 'a' is present in the answer.
'meeting' could be 'hit' (hit is a kind of meeting) and 'hit' is found within the answer.
'south' could be 's' (abbreviation) and 's' is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'ti' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tahitians that I've seen before include "some 16 [ISLANDER] s" , "some painted by Gauguin" , "race on island" , "Islanders in the 1 ac" , "Polynesian types" .)