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 located in the answer.
'meeting' could be 'hit' (hit is a kind of meeting) and 'hit' is located in the answer.
'south' could be 's' (abbreviation) and 's' is found within the answer.
The remaining letters 'ti' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
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" .)