An original model to simulate single grain boundary motion and its interaction with particles (Couturier G, Maurice C, Fortunier R. Phil Mag 2003;83:3387) is applied to model curvature driven grain growth. For single phase material, the single grain boundary model closely matches the grain coarsening kinetics of a 3D multi boundary vertex model. In the presence of spherical incoherent particles the growth rate slows down to give a growth exponent of 2.5. When the boundary is anchored there is a significantly higher density, four times higher, of particles on the boundary than the density predicted by the classic Zener analysis, but particles exert, on average, a drag force about half of the maximum value assumed by Zener. As a result the Zener drag is increased by a factor of 2.2. The limiting grain radius is compared with some experimental results.